By Guest Columnist CHARISSE M. WILLIAMS, a lawyer by training and a non-profit leader
I first learned that Atlanta Grammy Award winning rapper, activist, and entrepreneur Killer Mike owned the barbershop, The Swag Shop, when Atlanta Public Schools Superintendent Meria Carstarphen tweeted that his shop was giving free back-to-school haircuts. I had passed the shop on Edgewood Avenue, with its funky sign and façade, many times.
Kathryn Johnston is to be memorialized by a park named in her honor. The future park is located a few blocks from the home where Atlanta police officers shot and killed the 92-year-old matron in her living room after bursting into her home in 2006.
The Power to Inspire fundraising for the Center for Civil and Human Rights Thursday night bridged the nonviolent student movement of the 1960s with the anti-gun violence student moved of today.
Three of the student leaders from Parkland, Fla. joined members of the Atlanta March for our Lives student leaders to tour the Center before the gala dinner.
MEMPHIS – For 50 years, I had little desire to travel to Memphis.
The city always triggered one of the most painful memories of my youth – the assassination of an idol who had become a friend – Martin Luther King Jr.
I have often said my life peaked when I was 11. It was September, 1966 when I became close friends with Yolanda King, who had helped integrate my elementary school – Spring Street – along with the children of Juanita and Ralph David Abernathy.
An exhaustive effort is underway to catapult the international recognition of the modern Civil Rights movement in the South.
Thanks to a grant from the Alabama Department of Tourism, Georgia State University is shepherding the effort to get about a dozen Civil Rights landmarks to be nominated as World Heritage sites.
“Fifty years later we should be at [parity], not because whites in America are doing worse, but because blacks in America are doing better,” said professor Nisha Botchwey, explaining data from the “Measuring the Dream” project.
By Kevin Gillese World Class: If there is one phrase that gets bandied around quite often in Atlanta, particularly in the arts and culture community, it’s this one. Sometimes it feels like Atlantans are so obsessed with becoming “world class” that they don’t see how much of our city is already there. At its most […]
The Metro Atlanta Chamber today celebrates the contributions of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. with a statement from MAC President and CEO Hala Moddelmog: “Dr. King’s legacy lives on in Atlanta – it’s in our daily lives, the work we do here at the Metro Atlanta Chamber and in our drive to build an inspiring […]
By Dr. Anita Ward, President, Operation HOPE, Inc. Until today, it had been a long time since I read the “I have a dream” speech by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The words resonate more as the decades have passed, and collective dream of equality has grown stronger. New voices of women, children, immigrants, and […]
Atlanta’s tributes to John Lewis are already taking place, with his name being added to East Freedom Parkway and a committee formally announcing its plans for three other tributes to the civil and human rights leader, and Atlanta’s congressional representative since 1987.
The first of three planned tributes to civil and human rights leader John Lewis got the green light Tuesday from a committee of the Atlanta City Council. In addition to naming East Freedom Parkway for Lewis, other planned memorials include a display at Atlanta’s airport and some sort of artwork in Freedom Park.
The same week Georgia unveiled a statue of Martin Luther King Jr., the U.S. Supreme Court requested the governor of Mississippi to defend the Confederate battle emblem on his state’s flag. Calls to lynch anyone trying to remove Confederate symbols have been issued by a Mississippi lawmaker and other state officials, according to a petition asking the court to consider a lawsuit involving the flag symbol.
It makes no sense.
As the nation and our region ponder whether to erase Confederate history by removing monuments and renaming streets, we are letting our precious landmarks of African-American history crumble to dust.
Where is the passion and dedication to save the pillars of U.S. black history? Let’s begin with Gaines Hall, built in 1869 and the second oldest building in the city of Atlanta, and the place where W.E.B. DuBois wrote the mind-changing book: “The Souls of Black Folks.”
The Center for Civil and Human Rights 2017 Power to Inspire Tribute dinner on May 18 provided nourishment for the soul.
And that’s just what event planners intended.
“We wanted to articulate the spirit of human and civil rights, and honor those who lift that spirit up – those who do the heavy lifting,” said Ingrid Saunders Jones.
For several years running, Atlanta has become the venue for addressing the problem of poverty in the United States while focusing on solutions.
The convener is Operation HOPE’s Global Forum, which just met in Atlanta at the Marriott Marquis from April 10 to April 12. This year’s theme was “Uplifting the Invisible Class” – focusing on the people who have fallen between the cracks.
(Editor’s Note: This story has been updated with photos by Kelly Jordan.)
The John Lewis Chair for Civil Rights and Social Justice, at Emory University, has been fully funded through $2 million in gifts and pledges. Emory is to conduct a national search for an academician to fill the seat.
A large majority of Georgians (74 percent) support passing a state law to protect gay and transgender people in the areas of employment, housing and public accommodations, according to a survey conducted by the Just Win Foundation.
But the same survey shows that an equal percentage of Georgians think it’s already illegal under state law to fire, refuse to hire, deny housing or public accommodations access to a person who is gay or transgender.
Now more than ever, it’s time to adopt the slogan: “Atlanta loves you.”
My regular readers know it’s not the first time I’ve suggested the “Atlanta loves you” moniker for our city.
I have long felt those three simple words said it all.
We are often told that to accurately judge history, it must be viewed through an empathetic lens. It is difficult, they say, to assess actions without applying the standards of the day to those actions. Our story this week is ostensibly about an event pertaining to public safety. There is historical precedence for the actions that were taken, but one wonders…do the times of the day ever justify the suspension of our constitutional liberties? A not so easy question to answer in this week’s Stories of Atlanta.
Ricci de Forest is a Madam C.J. Walker devotee and curator of a small Atlanta museum that honors her legacy. That’s why he so pleased that the name and history of the woman who “is credited with being the grand dame of the Black beauty industry” is being revived with the launch of a new line of hair products in her honor.
