Binghampton, Memphis

[1] It is named after W. H. Bingham, an Irish immigrant, hotelier, planter, magistrate, politician, and entrepreneur who founded a town to the east and slightly north of the Memphis city limits in 1893.

The town developed around a freight car factory that made primarily wooden boxcars for a railroad along a light rail line to Raleigh Springs spa and resort.

Binghampton had its own power plant and municipal water, located by the carbarns for the Raleigh Springs Electric Railway, where the Chickasaw Country Club's clubhouse now stands.

Groceries, a drugstore, a post office, police department, jail, bakeries, and eleven saloons once faced the factory across Broad on the south.

In 2006, citizens from the neighborhood voiced concerns about negative effects that the completion of the western portion of Sam Cooper Boulevard has had on the community.

[4] The Memphis Flyer cites Robert Montague, executive director of the Binghampton Development Corporation: "When they built Sam Cooper, this area really got buried."

[4] The following year, trees and shrubs were planted alongside Sam Cooper Boulevard and in the median west of North Highland Street.

In May 2011, French artist Guillaume Alby painted a large 1,800-square-foot geometrically styled mural on the 2500 block of Broad Avenue that runs through Binghampton.

These included another mural on a warehouse wall facing the street and the lighting-up of the iconic watertower which identifies Broad Avenue, also now painted, among many others.

For years, Binghampton, bordered by Poplar, East Parkway, Summer, and Holmes, has suffered from blight, crime, poverty, and a perception problem.

The grocery store project, rumored for years (Binghampton is a notorious food-desert) is finally underway at the corner of Sam Cooper and Tillman: a supermarket, no less.

Upon responding to a call from a woman concerned about her son and his father, Memphis police discovered six individuals murdered inside the home, four adults and two children.

[7][8] Dotson confessed to Memphis Police Lieutenant Toney Armstrong as well as to his own mother that he had committed the murders, although he recanted his statement the following day.

[9][10] As of 2023[update], Jessie Dotson's execution has not been carried out and he remains incarcerated on death row by the Tennessee Department of Corrections at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville.