Capital B Atlanta community engagement editor Ann Hill Bond works at the intersection of Black history, narrative journalism, and civic life while listening to what Atlanta has to say. Whether the writer and public historian is attending weekly civic meetings at City Hall, dropping in on a neighborhood gathering in Oakland City, or hosting an information session on the mayor’s TAD initiatives at Capital B’s office in Pittsburgh Yards, she’s always repping the city and residents with love.
And now she’s bringing her depth of knowledge of Atlanta’s history and love for our city’s future to the radio. Launching Thursday, Sept. 17, at 4 p.m., Capital B Atlanta’s new radio show Love, Atlanta will premiere on the historic community radio station WRFG 89.3 FM.
Each week, Ann will host a lively conversation with our reporters and special guests including cultural influencers, political insiders, dedicated activists, and community leaders who are helping to shape the city we all love.
Bond is widely recognized for her sustained work documenting the 1906 Atlanta Race Massacre and Fulton County’s history of racial terror lynchings. As community chair of the Fulton County Remembrance Coalition, she has led soil collection ceremonies at all 36 documented lynching sites in the county, installing Equal Justice Initiative remembrance markers, and co-convened the national Change the Name campaign. She has also led research for the Chattahoochee Brick Company Descendants Coalition, uncovering the history of forced labor at the site and its lasting impact on surrounding communities. Her work has shaped County Reparations, two U.S. House resolutions, and the Southeastern Emmy-winning WABE documentary (re)Defining History.
Ann shares a preview of what listeners can expect when they tune in every Thursday 4-5 p.m.
Why did you name the show “Love, Atlanta”?
Because “love” is a civic practice. And that’s different from simply liking a city. Loving Atlanta doesn’t mean pretending Atlanta is perfect. Love requires honesty.
You can love Atlanta and ask why families who have lived in a neighborhood for generations are being priced out. You can love Atlanta and confront the legacy of the 1906 Atlanta Race Massacre.
You can love Atlanta and ask difficult questions about housing, maternal health, gun violence, education, immigration, environmental justice, food insecurity, disability access and who gets heard when decisions about our communities are being made.
I’ve spent years working around historical memory, and one thing history teaches us is that silence isn’t neutral.
What we choose to remember matters. What we choose to call something matters. Whose story gets preserved matters. Who gets to tell that story matters.
That’s part of love, too.
Love is also joyful, and Atlanta is joy.
It’s culture and possibility. It’s hip-hop, HBCUs, Waffle House, NPUs, City Hall, MARTA, and teenage meetups. It’s food, art, churches, front porches, beauty shops and barbershops. It’s neighborhoods where somebody can still tell you who lived in a house 50 years ago.
It’s also immigrants, newcomers and people bringing languages, traditions, food, faith, and ideas from all over the world and adding them to Atlanta’s story.
So Love, Atlanta is a letter to the city. Because to me, loving Atlanta is a civic responsibility.
What can listeners expect when they tune into Love, Atlanta each week?
They can expect to encounter Atlanta in ways they haven’t before.
One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned from my editorial work with Black and independent press is that community journalism becomes much more interesting when the journalist stops assuming they already know what the story is. Listen first.
That’s what I want to bring to Love, Atlanta.
There will be history because you can’t understand Atlanta today without understanding what happened here yesterday.
The 1906 Atlanta Race Massacre can help us understand journalism, political power, land, racial violence and even the geography of Atlanta today. A 5-acre community farm can become a conversation about food access, land, health, and self-determination. A youth leadership program can become a conversation about who we’re preparing to lead Atlanta next.
We’ll talk about housing, development, education, transportation, public safety, politics, health and preservation. We’ll talk about environmental justice, immigration, disability, LGBTQ+ life, economic mobility, youth leadership and civic participation.
We’ll also talk about Atlanta’s cultural life — hip-hop, visual art, food, books, Black businesses, HBCUs and the people creating things in this city right now.
What made you want to launch a community radio show?
I’ve actually been building Love, Atlanta for years. I just didn’t know it was going to become a radio show. My work has always centered on listening.
As a writer, public preservationist, and community engagement practitioner, I’ve spent years going where people are already having conversations: Neighborhood Planning Unit meetings, neighborhood associations, churches, community forums, remembrance ceremonies, historical sites, and listening sessions. I attend 20 to 30 civic meetings in a month, and what I’ve learned is that some of the most important conversations happening in Atlanta never make it into the news.
I don’t just arrive in a neighborhood and decide what its story is. I listen first.
So Love, Atlanta isn’t me suddenly deciding that I want to interview people on the radio.
Radio gives me the opportunity to bring journalism, oral history, public history, civic engagement, and community conversation together in one place.
I want Atlanta to hear itself.
Who would be some of your dream guests to have on the show?
Of course there are some iconic Atlanta voices I’d love to sit down with — people who have helped shape how Atlanta understands itself and how the rest of the world understands Atlanta.
I’d love conversations with people like Ambassador Andrew Young, Mayor Shirley Franklin, Charly Palmer, André 3000 and Nic Stone. I’d love to talk with scholars like Dr. Daniel Black and journalists like Rose Scott — people who have spent years thinking seriously about Atlanta, Black life, culture, history, and power.
But here’s the thing: Some of my real dream guests aren’t “famous.”
I want the 80-year-old woman who has lived in the same Atlanta neighborhood for 60 years. And I’d love to put her at the table with the 25-year-old developer who has a vision for what that neighborhood should become.
I want the grandmother raising her grandchildren. The MARTA operator. The barber. The teacher. The immigrant small-business owner. The student at AUC, Atlanta Metro, Washington High, or Crim.
One of the things I want Love, Atlanta to do is expand our idea of who deserves the microphone. You shouldn’t have to be famous for your Atlanta story to matter.
Why is WRFG the best partner for this launch?
Because WRFG and I share a belief about who public media belongs to. WRFG has spent more than 50 years creating space for communities, music, ideas, and perspectives that haven’t always been given space elsewhere.
What are some of the most significant challenges Atlanta residents are facing, and how will your show address those concerns?
For me, so many of Atlanta’s challenges come back to one question: Who gets to stay, who gets to thrive, and who gets to participate in the Atlanta we’re building?
Atlanta is growing. Investment is coming into neighborhoods that went decades without it. The question is: Who benefits?
I’ve worked in communities where residents survived the years when nobody wanted their neighborhood. Now that everybody wants it, they’re wondering whether they’ll be able to afford to stay.
Housing and displacement are enormous issues. So are property ownership, education, transportation, public safety, food access, environmental justice, health and preservation.
You plan to end each show with the question, “Why do you love Atlanta?” So what’s your answer?
I’m not an Atlanta native. I came here carrying all of my identities and experiences with me, and Atlanta gave me room to bring those things into conversation with this extraordinary place.
And the longer I’ve lived here, the more I’ve realized that history is everywhere.
I’ve stood on sites where Black people were lynched and helped collect soil in their memory. I’ve helped descendants recover pieces of family history. I’ve walked historic Black neighborhoods with elders who can point to a building and tell you what happened there before any historical marker existed.
But I’ve also had the privilege of documenting Atlanta’s joy — our neighborhoods, art, hip-hop, resilience, creativity, and the everyday people who make this place what it is.
Maybe that’s what keeps me here. Atlanta doesn’t only ask you to remember what people before you built. It asks what you’re going to build while you’re here.
So why do I love Atlanta? I love Atlanta because Atlanta keeps teaching me.
Tune into Love, Atlanta on WRFG Thursdays from 4-5 p.m.
