Miriam Cordero, a longtime Memphis resident who owns a downtown flower shop, sounded torn last week about the arrival of federal forces in the city in the coming days.
“If they come to help with the crime, I think we can be OK with that. But if they’re going to scare people?” Ms. Cordero said. “It’s so vague, the information we have.”
President Trump’s decision to send the National Guard and other agencies into the city has many residents feeling similarly uncertain: They are weary of the crime rate, one of the highest in the nation, and open to some federal help. Yet some are also wary of more heavy-handed policing that fails to address systemic problems.
Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican who supports the plan, has offered few specifics about personnel or assignments, beyond that at least 13 agencies would be present in the city beginning this week to help with local law enforcement. The National Guard will act in a support role to the local police and deputies, he has said, without the authority to arrest people.
For some, the prospect of troops in fatigues has invoked one of the city’s most fraught periods, during the sanitation workers’ strike and the aftermath of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in 1968, when the Guard was sent to quell unrest. Even among residents who are open to the idea of federal help, there are concerns about optics and skepticism about how effective it will be.
“I don’t want it to just be a show, because we’ve got real issues in our community,” said Charlie Caswell Jr., a commissioner in Shelby County, home to Memphis, who represents some of the neighborhoods with the highest crime rates. He added, “My people, they want to see the change.”
More than the National Guard, some people have asked questions about possible fallout from the involvement of a number of federal agencies in the intervention, including the F.B.I., the Drug Enforcement Administration and the United States Marshals Service.
Sharon Becton, 66, who was taking a break from selling flavored popcorn in the Midtown neighborhood last week, said simply, “I just hope and pray it helps.”
Few, if any, will deny the challenges Memphis faces, especially related to crime rates in some of its neighborhoods. But in one of the nation’s largest majority-Black cities, many of those challenges can also be traced to decades of racist oppression and disinvestment.
A University of Memphis analysis published in 2024 found that the city’s poverty rate of 22.6 percent was among the highest in the nation, with Black residents disproportionately affected. Wages tend to be low and have stayed stagnant.
The city’s pride is evident in its artistic ingenuity, investments by local philanthropists and even the local N.B.A. franchise. As readily as they acknowledge its challenges, some residents still bristle at outsiders defining Memphis by its worst moments, like the King assassination or the high-profile beating of a motorist by members of its police force in 2023.
Memphis is “a city that has so much potential, so much opportunity, so much talent, but yet and still the resources aren’t there,” said K. Durell Cowan, the founder and head of Heal 901, a local nonprofit. He questioned why his organization had lost access to federal grants this year, yet money remained for an influx of agents and officers.
Violent crime has decreased in the city recently, slowly mirroring a national trend, after a series of high-profile murders and carjackings in 2022 and 2023. In some neighborhoods, however, there is a desire for more progress.
“Maybe they are trying, but trying is not keeping these people alive,” said Pastor Leon Jones Jr., who works in the neighborhoods of Raleigh and Frayser in north Memphis, where crime rates often outpace those of the rest of the city. “We need some help.”
As recently as August, Governor Lee told reporters that there were no plans to send the National Guard to Memphis. He had already sent state troopers in to help the local police, and the F.B.I. had coordinated a crime reduction operation that led to nearly 500 arrests.
But by mid-September, the governor was in the Oval Office, standing next to Mr. Trump as the president signed an executive order creating a Memphis-specific federal task force to help address crime in the city.
At a news conference last week, Mr. Lee said that “it was never off the table” that the National Guard would be deployed to Memphis and that there was a broader conversation about more federal assistance.
“It became evident that it’s exactly what needs to happen,” he said, “because we know that if we have access to those resources, this problem can be solved.”
The announcement was quickly welcomed by Tennessee Republicans.
“I think the show of force is hugely important to reinforce the idea that we are getting control of the problem,” said Luke Cymbal, the vice chairman of the Shelby County Republican Party. He added, “we’re not trying to infringe on people’s rights here. We’re just trying to arrest criminals.”
Among some Democrats, there is a desire to challenge the federal intervention. But the political dynamics are different in Memphis, compared to Democratic-led California, Oregon or Illinois. The Republican supermajority in the state legislature has been quick to threaten or overrule the Democratic-led city and its leaders over policies it opposes, making the deployment feel inevitable.
Mayor Paul Young, a Democrat who has focused on public safety in his first term, has said that he does not think the National Guard is the best solution, but has stressed that the city should work with the federal government regardless. At the news conference last week, he stood alongside Mr. Lee, along with the police chief and other officials.
“Crime still exists — I never said crime was over,” Mr. Young said. He added that “we have a lot of work to do to get crime at a level where people really, really feel” a change for the better.”
Some organizations have railed against what they have described as a looming militarization of the city, uniting behind a “Free the 901” campaign, a reference to the Memphis ZIP code. Community leaders are quietly reminding neighbors of their rights and to address any unpaid tickets or minor infractions.
“This is going to do untold damage to this community’s ability to govern itself and to make its own decisions,” said Josh Spickler, the executive director of Just City, a criminal justice organization.
There are also fears about federal agencies taking a punitive approach in certain communities, including as part of the Trump administration’s broader campaign to detain undocumented immigrants. And there are questions about what an uptick in arrests would mean for a clogged court system and an overcrowded county jail with a record of poor conditions.
At a moment when household and business costs are already rising, business owners also worry that the visible presence of federal troops could scare residents into staying home and tourists into staying away.
Ms. Cordero’s flower shop revenue has dropped by at least 35 percent in recent months, she estimated, citing higher costs and fewer sales driven by tariffs and inflation.
“This is a hard moment,” she said.
There is also some distrust of the Memphis Police Department. Senator Brent Taylor, who has led a call for a more aggressive crackdown on crime, and State Representative John Gillespie have asked for an audit of the department’s crime data, while others have questioned its transparency.
After the 2023 beating and death of Tyre Nichols, a Justice Department investigation found that the department had a pattern of excessive force, particularly against Black residents. The report, issued shortly before President Biden left office, was retracted after Mr. Trump returned to the White House. (Mr. Young and Chief Cerelyn Davis said the department has made changes in response to Mr. Nichols’s death.)
Even those who are cautiously open to the infusion of federal resources said they were conflicted over ceding some local control on the issue of crime.
“Aren’t we the best people to solve the problem?” asked Leslie Taylor, co-founder of the nonpartisan Memphis Crime Beat, which focuses on tracking the city’s court system. “And yet we haven’t been able to, so here we are.”
Ms. Taylor added, “Somebody asked me the other day, ‘What’s your goal in five years?’” referring to her organization. She said her response was, “Wouldn’t it be great if we didn’t have to talk about crime all the time?”
Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington.
Emily Cochrane is a national reporter for The Times covering the American South, based in Nashville.
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