Commentary

"While history can provide an anchor to one’s soul, myths can become a kind of prison." Retired AJC columnist Jim Galloway looks at how myths of Scottish history influenced the South's Lost Cause myth.

When an NBA team owner issues a mea culpa at the same time he’s hanging a “For Sale” sign on his share of the franchise, we know we have entered a new era in sports.

It can’t have been easy to be a Cobb resident this week. Since Monday’s surprise announcement of the Braves’ impending relocation to a vacant lot near Cumberland Mall, the prevailing attitude from the rest of the metro area has been: Effing *Cobb*. Those highway-worshipin’, Applebees-eatin’ suburbanites spit in the face of progress [time][1] and [again][2], then steal our baseball team.

Especially in the South, philanthropy has sometimes provided superficial atonement for anti-Black racism. Atlanta must do so much better. With leadership transitions at CFGA and other major nonprofit institutions upon us, I offer three goals as a call to action for addressing the mismatch between nonprofit institutional talk and walk.

Our fair city’s romance with the wrecking ball and bulldozer is well documented. So it seemed like cause for huzzahs when the Atlanta Urban Design Commission denied a request to demolish the Auburn Avenue building that once was home to the Atlanta Daily World, the country’s first black-owned daily paper.The Integral Group — a developer with a track record of working on urban projects, including the redevelopment of Grady Homes — planned to preserve the World’s facade and replace its guts with new apartments, affordably priced and presumably appealing to Georgia State University students. Critics said saving the façade wasn’t enough, and more than 1,100 people signed a petition protesting Integral and GSU (never mind that the school wasn’t formally associated with the project).

Atlanta really, really, wants to be the site of Amazon’s HQ2, but we've got some problems that could halt that. How do we fix our issues before the Amazon delegation arrives to inspect our city? Like a steel plate over a pothole, let's cover 'em up.

Sara Totonchi and Marissa McCall Dodson of the nonprofit law firm Southern Center for Human Rights on how the next governor of Georgia must continue Governor Nathan Deal's mission of criminal justice reform.

In the city's constant compulsion to reinvent itself, it lost an important part of itself instead.

There are two certainties in a bar that allows smoking: 1) The drinks are cheap, and 2) The bar has history. Those are two precious commodities these days, especially in a city that, like many cities, is morphing into one giant luxury apartment building with a generic name.

Dollar enabled an old-school sales compliance technique practiced by everyone who's worked a phone during an NPR membership drive. The good reverend can come back with a more modest request and cite the struggle of fundraising in a faithless world. His people will fall for it. And by laughing at Dollar, we're helping him.