This story is produced in collaboration with the Institute for Public Service Reporting.
One hundred years ago on May 8, a man who could not swim saved 32 people from drowning in the Mississippi River.
That heroic act got him a meeting with President Calvin Coolidge and a house in North Memphis. And one of Downtown’s most iconic parks honors his heroism.
His name was Tom Lee.
This time of year, the Mississippi River is high, creeping up the tree trunks that line the shore. A few feet away is a statue that depicts the actions of Tom Lee Park’s namesake. Lee, in a small motorboat, reaches out to a victim of a capsized steamboat.
“It had to be a horrific thing for him. Knowing this river the way he did and knowing how unkind it could be,” said Terry Watts, Lee’s great-great nephew while standing at the foot of the monument.
“And to just see a boat of that magnitude capsized and people in the water screaming out. And instantly, it brings fear to you as an individual. Now, what do I do?” he said.
The M.E. Norman was well over capacity when it left Memphis with 72 passengers and crew. It was a sightseeing cruise for members of the Engineers Club of Memphis and the American Society of Civil Engineers, along with their families. Lee was the sole witness to its sinking, about 15 miles downriver from the city.
“I often put myself in his shoes, what would I have done?” Watts said.
Despite being unable to swim, Lee pulled 32 people from the frigid waters in five trips to the shore. He then built a fire to keep them warm until more help arrived.
“He had to be thinking that ‘Hey, I'm risking my life and limb and I can very well not be able to walk back from this,’” Watts said. “But I want to say God was with him.”
That sentiment was shared by the whole City of Memphis. Lee was rewarded with a job in the sanitation department, one of the most stable jobs available to Black people at the time. The engineers groups raised money for Lee and his family and eventually bought him a house in the Klondike neighborhood of North Memphis.
But because a Black man had saved a group of white people in a then-segregated city, Lee’s story is one of both heroism, and race. In 1954, two years after his death, the first public monument honoring Lee called him “a very worthy Negro.”
Randall Garrett, housing director for the Klondike Smokey City Community Development Corporation said the street where Lee’s house still stands “a microcosm of the controversy.”
He points across the street where instead of seeing the fronts of the houses, there’s backyard fences. According to Garrett’s research “that's because white people didn't want to face a Black neighborhood.”
Lee’s heroic status, for example, couldn’t save one of his neighbors, Andrew Jordan, who bled to death when white ambulance drivers refused to take him to the hospital.
A commentary in a local newspaper pointed out the hypocrisy: “A human life is a human life…part of the community’s debt to Tom Lee could have been paid by showing a little kindness to Andrew Jordan.”
The Klondike Smokey City CDC now owns Lee’s house and plans to turn it into a museum.
Lee’s shotgun-style house is fairly plain, but about double the usual size. Renovations are needed, but in the works.
Charmeal Neely, a cousin of Watts, has been involved in preserving the house. She first learned about her ancestor when she was a teenager. For years, her father had worked with city leaders to organize events commemorating Lee. When her father died, her mother passed along the briefcase containing all of his research.
“I think I just need to continue what he was doing,” she said. “Just keeping his dream alive. It means a lot to me.”
Her efforts led to a meeting with Yvonne Tipton-Irons, who owned the house. In 2007 she was renting it out, but knew nothing of its backstory.
“I couldn't believe it. It was like, wow! This is really something,” Tipton-Irons said. “I felt like I had a little piece of a treasure or something.”
At first, Tipton-Irons was reluctant to sell the property. But then in 2018, Klondike Smokey City CDC’s executive director Quincey Morris shared their plans for the museum. Tipton-Irons had a change of heart and donated the house.
“Maybe God gave it to me for me to keep it and give it to them,” she said. “Because if it had been someone else, most people would have sold it.”
Back at the river, Terry Watts recalls bringing a first date to Tom Lee Park just to share his family’s story. He married that woman, and later taught his six kids to fly kites here.
“I would bring a lot of individuals down here and I'll introduce him,” he said. “I say, ‘I want you to meet somebody.’”
But even with the family connection, his first memories of visiting the park as a kid in the 1960s were of exclusion. He recalled the annual King and Queen of Cotton parade along the Mississippi River.
“Every year we had the King and Queen of Cotton parade. They would come down this river — the white King and Queen of Cotton — on the Memphis Queen. With all the drab on, and the scepter, and the big pretty chairs,” he said. “Us Black individuals, we were at the top of the hill. Where down here in the park were the white individuals. Well, at the very end of it, you had a barge, which you had the Black King and Queen of Cotton. And I asked the question to my mother, even then: 'Why are we at the back, and on barge? Well, that's just everything we knew about our history.”
Now, park leaders specifically aim to make the shared space more welcoming to all. Rangers wear shirts that say “hi neighbor,” said Jasmine Coleman, director of programming and engagement for the Memphis River Parks Partnership, the nonprofit that now manages the park.
“They are there to make sure everybody that visits the park feels welcome and that it is safe for them to be in on a daily basis,” she said.
The group is planning events around the 100th anniversary including walking tours, a poetry contest, a day of service, and a parade.
Memphis Mayor Paul Young declared 2025 as “Tom Lee 100” and urged residents to mimic Lee’s quote “unity, selflessness, and unwavering commitment to helping others.” It’s all summed up in the theme “Keep it Tom Lee.”
“We're encouraging Memphis to be 1% more like Tom Lee and being 1% more generous, courageous, and having more humanity,” Coleman said.
Watts says the renewed attention gives younger people — like his granddaughter — more ownership of history.
“You know, and as they get older, one day this story will be told by one of them,” he said. “And that's what we talk about now. It's going to have to be somebody to tell a story after we're gone. We don't want him to be forgotten at no stretch.”
Each trip back to the steamboat was dangerous for Lee, but he still reached out. In a way, he is still reaching out a century later — inspiring a new generation to lend a helping hand, even if it’s risky.
Tom Lee 100 events will be posted on www.tomleepark.org.
On Thursday, May 8 at 2 p.m. at the Cossitt Library Downtown, there will be a screening of a short film about Tom Lee and a poetry reading.
At 11 a.m. on Saturday, May 10, at 1396 Jackson Avenue, Klondike Smokey Community Development Corporation will host a 100-year anniversary celebration of Tom Lee’s heroic act. The event, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. will include a popup community museum that will display a detailed history of the first community incorporated in the city of Memphis for Black people where Tom Lee lived.