Amber Sherman

“My main thought was that the power’s going to be out for a while and people aren’t prepared for that and it’s very hot outside,”

Amber Sherman · said date not stated · reported 2026-09-05

Sherman, an east Memphis resident who lost power in the 22 August storm, said her first thoughts were of her neighbors and the heat.

“I think a lot of times, people outside of Memphis don’t know what’s happening here, and I thought it was really important because of what was happening Gary, too,”

Amber Sherman · said date not stated · reported 2026-09-05

Sherman discussed the importance of raising awareness about Memphis's situation, drawing a parallel to a power outage in Gary, Indiana.

“Highlighting that this issue with infrastructure in Black cities is not a new problem, but a consistent problem that we really need to address.”

Amber Sherman · said date not stated · reported 2026-09-05

Sherman highlighted infrastructure issues in Black cities as a consistent problem, drawing comparisons near the 21st anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

“In this instance, where I, as a regular citizen, had to recruit people in Jackson, Mississippi and Nashville to drive generators up and help to set up food distributions because our government isn’t doing that.”

Amber Sherman · said date not stated · reported 2026-09-05

Sherman described having to recruit people from Jackson, Mississippi and Nashville to bring generators and set up food distributions because the government was not doing so.

“Community is always going to keep each other safe, and we can’t depend on systems to do that because they’ve shown us time and time again that they won’t,”

Amber Sherman · said date not stated · reported 2026-09-05

Sherman expressed that communities keep each other safe because systems have repeatedly shown they will not.