Chattanooga City Councilman Moses Freeman drew strong criticism Thursday night from the crowd at a community event when he said black residents in Chattanooga were choosing to be segregated.
“They are choosing to live in their enclaves,” he told a crowd at Chattanooga Speaks to loud boos and jeers.
“How can you say that?” asked Ash-Lee Henderson, a Concerned Citizens for Justice organizer, who was sitting in the crowd and stood to address Freeman. “Chattanooga has the fastest-growing costs of living in the country. How can you say that black people choose to stay where they are at?”
Freeman, who represents downtown and was one of eight panelists at Chattanooga Speaks, was responding to a question about how to address poverty and the city’s racial divide.
Chattanooga Speaks is run by the owners of Main Street Innovations, who use a program modeled after Franklin McCallie’s Chattanooga Connected to start public conversations about race, poverty and inequality and to present solutions to those problems.