Sunday is when paradise is preached and seen. They come dressed in their Sunday best. Starched collars and scuffed shoes. Wide-brimmed hats blooming like flowers across the sanctuary. An elder humming low, as if tuning her soul like a string before the choir rose. The beauty of the stained glass fell across the pews like […]
Essay
Posted inEssay, History
History Beneath Our Feet: The Police Killings That Sparked Summer Riots in the 1960s
Atlanta loves to repeat its favorite line, a city too busy to hate. But these places know otherwise. There are streets in Atlanta where memory lies low, beneath the asphalt, whispering like wind through brick. If you walk slowly enough, you’ll hear it: not history, but instruction. Not nostalgia, but reckoning. Begin here. Georgia Avenue. […]
Posted inEssay, History
History Beneath Our Feet: Marcus Garvey Met with the Klan and then Faced Prison in Atlanta
Stand at the corner of Auburn Avenue and Jessie Hill Jr. Drive, and wait for the wind to blow. Admire the blue letters “Jesus Saves,” hanging like a benediction above Big Bethel AME Church. Steady your eyes and try to see him in the whirlwinds. It’s been raining lately in Atlanta, so maybe you will […]
Posted inEssay, History
History Beneath Our Feet: Where MARTA Runs, Lives Were Once Sold in Atlanta
Back then, they called it Whitehall Street. Today, it’s the Five Points station, where trains rattle beneath pavement and buses exhale their daily breath into the Georgia sun. But before there was MARTA, before the high-rises, before Black folks were paid for the culture that created the pulse of this city, we were on the […]