Third-grader Cassidy Nickelberg says the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. would be “sad and mad” about a major company’s decision to close a neighborhood grocery store in her South Memphis neighborhood.

“We [protested] because we wanted to keep the Kroger open for the people who don’t have cars,” said Amiaya Davis, another third-grader at Vision Preparatory Charter School. “They may have to walk four or five miles to the next Kroger or ride the bus and they’re going to have to spend their dollars to go there, spending extra money.”

Closing the Kroger will worsen a South Memphis “food desert” where it’s already challenging to buy fresh fruit and vegetables. About 60 percent of families in the mostly African-American neighborhood surrounding the store earn less than $25,000 annually.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture defines a food desert as a community of at least 500 people in which more than a third of the population lives more than a mile from a large grocery store.

Access to fresh food is a challenge in Memphis. The city ranked first in hunger in a 2010 Gallup poll that said 26 percent of Memphians could not afford food for their family at some point in the previous year. The Bluff City also had the highest obesity rate among cities with populations over 1 million, according to a 2013 Gallup index that measures wellbeing.

Read the full article about this grocery store closing in a food desert by Laura Faith Kebede at Chalkbeat.