Memphian Pat Morgan has made it her mission to work on behalf of the homeless both locally and nationally, and she wrote about that mission in The Concrete Killing Fields: One Woman’s Battle To Break the Cycle of Homelessness, published in early 2014.

A report from the city’s “Concrete Killing Fields.” by LEONARD GILL

Pat Morgan doesn't know how a Memphis man named John Marshall, age 65, died in November 1987. But she knows this: A bulldozer operator at a city dump discovered Marshall's body. Which means Marshall had been collected from one of the city's trash bins, where perhaps he'd sought warmth against the cold.

Hundreds of thousands of Americans face the holidays without shelter and without hope. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John Kennedy and the legislation that he championed, commonly called the Community Mental Health Centers Act.

Thousands of Memphians spend their nights in homeless shelters or squatting in abandoned buildings. And the problem is getting worse.

Just before 8 o’clock on a blustery January morning, about 50 men and a few women gather…