This week was a busy one for the Operation HOPE (silver rights) movement in the southeast region. On Wednesday, I joined Bryan Jordan, the chairman and CEO of First Horizon and First Tennessee Bank (and Capital Bank) for the ribbon cutting of and for two HOPE Inside locations on the same day. One HOPE Inside, Capital Bank at Culumbia, South Carolina, and another HOPE Inside, Capital Bank at Hickory, North Carolina.
These two locations bring our HOPE Inside Network within the First Tennessee Bank family to more than 20 locations and growing. We now have more than 130 operating HOPE Inside location nationwide, in bank branches, police stations, hospitals, houses of faith, and major employers such as Delta Airlines, UPS and AT&T. We also have HOPE Inside locations with SunTrust Banks and BancorpSouth, in addition to First Tennessee Bank and the City of Memphis now.
Our goal is 1,000 commitments of and for HOPE Inside locations by December 31, 2020.
I ended my week in Memphis, TN, where I stood with Memphis Mayor Strickland as he announced his plans to bring a HOPE Inside the Workplace to the City employees of Memphis!
Some of these workers — the sanitation workers — are the same exact employee group that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. traveled to Memphis to support in the Sanitation Worker’s Strike of 1968. Their cause, was the cause that Dr. King ultimately laid down his life for, as he was assassinated in April, 1968, on the eve of his launch of the Poor People’s Campaign.
Mayor Strickland originally traveled to Atlanta, May 29-31, 2019, to announce the new HOPE Inside the Workplace as a HOPE Commitment at the HOPE Global Forum 2019.
I also was honored to serve as the keynote speaker for the City of Memphis ‘We Mean Business Symposium,’ sponsored by FedEx and the Mayor’s Office of Small Business, and led by its director Ms. Joann Massey (pictured second from left, back row).
Let’s go…
John Hope Bryant