By Guest Columnists FONTA HIGH and PAUL MCLENNAN, co-chairs of the Beacon Hill Black Alliance for Human Rights’ Decolonize Decatur Committee
As organizers and board members of Decatur’s Beacon Hill Black Alliance for Human Rights, we are grateful for all we have learned from our movement-building work over the last year. We believe we are creating an organizing model other communities can replicate.
On April 15, 1964, construction began on the Atlanta Fulton County Stadium. Mayor Ivan Allen, Jr. chose a 62-acre site near downtown and converted it into a major league sports arena with a price tag of $18 million. The city convinced the Milwaukee Braves to move and become the Atlanta Braves as we know them […]
Also, only one Georgian is in philanthropy’s biggest league.
Plus, Cobb and Gwinnett look to women, Democrats for local office.
It was a public nuisance, a judge ruled.
Georgia’s tourism economy was responsible in 2018 for nearly 500,000 jobs and total spending of $37 billion in communities both urban and rural. The state has named a new tourism director to oversee the growth and development of this sector of Georgia’s economy.
Georgia’s state Legislature has OK’d triple damages for monument vandals. One opponent called this an attempt to suppress debate about public monuments to the Confederacy. Left behind is a bill that would’ve helped DeKalb get rid of a Confederate obelisk that no one wants.
DeKalb County’s got a situation: it wants to get rid of the massive Confederate monument that it owns in downtown Decatur. But nobody wants it.
A bit of push-back is emerging around the planned Rodney Cook Sr. Park in Historic Vine City. One Atlanta resident said Tuesday at a public hearing the name marks it as Confederate memorial park. On Wednesday, the Atlanta City Council’s Finance Committee voted to delay action on a proposal to condemn six parcels of land needed to make the park as it’s currently envisioned.
Atlanta’s Confederate Avenue is to be renamed United Avenue, ending years of debate over what – if anything – to do with a name that holds near mystical power. The former name may be memorialized with an historic marker – in keeping with a multi-national practice of augmenting, rather than removing, a controversial mark of history.
What does the next Legislative session hold? Probably not approval of laws on casinos, religious freedom or an overhaul of DeKalb County’s government, according to a panel of the county’s delegates to the Gold Dome.
The racial composition of the Atlanta committee that’s reviewing Confederate icons in the city was called into question Wednesday by Aaron Turpeau, a former cabinet member of Maynard Jackson and Andrew Young’s mayoral administrations. It wasn’t the only concern expressed.
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.
