Richard Cecil "Dick" Hackett (born July 21, 1949) served as the mayor of Memphis, Tennessee from 1982 to 1991.
Despite his incredibly narrow loss to Herenton (172 votes out of slightly over 248,000 cast),[1] Hackett was a fairly popular mayor during his nine years in office.
Despite this, by 1991 Hackett had become vulnerable due to changing demographics (because of continued white flight to the suburbs and an increasing black population, the city was nearly 55% African-American by 1991) as well as controversies during his second full term, including Holiday Inn's corporate headquarters leaving the city for Atlanta, serious problems with the Memphis Housing Authority and embarrassing issues involving the financing of the Pyramid Arena in downtown.
[2] During Hackett's nine years as mayor, tourism, downtown redevelopment, business growth and non-profit institutional development were his main priorities.
He was considered a fiscal conservative, with property taxes increasing only once while he was in office (in 1985) and the city's debt level remaining well under control.