Tag: Civil Rights

Today, everybody in the South is living better than they’ve ever lived before, and we are much further along than we realize. The problems that still exist are hard to evaluate—in part because many people who identify as Christians seem to have gotten confused as to which side they’re on. Right now, we have a nation that seems to be completely divided.

In the early ’70s, my mom saw that private schools in New York City were giving Black students the opportunity to attend their prestigious institutions on scholarship. The Civil Rights Act made this possible, but the schools that carried out the goal of the Act were the true heroes.

For the majority of my upbringing, I never considered myself to be any form of activist, or thought I had those qualities of leadership. But once I began my career as a journalist, I started to see how the work of social justice activists is so much more than leading protests and speaking to crowds, the actions we commonly think of as activism.

The neighborhood I live in is called English Avenue. The northern end is a mile and a half from West Midtown, the southern end two and a half miles from the State Capitol and City Hall. Mercedes-Benz Stadium is in our backyard. Yet despite this proximity to Atlanta’s centers of privilege and power, the neighborhood has for too long been a background player in the story of this city.

One of the ways you can recognize that you have reached elder status is when you discover you can vividly recall events that took place 50 or 60 years ago. These are events that are now seen as having “historic importance,” even though in retrospect they may have seemed less so at the moment you were living through them in real time. That would certainly have been the case for me as a young person heading to Howard University from my home in Detroit.

Growing up, I felt the impact of both race and gender. I felt constrained at home because I was a girl and overprotected, and outside my community, I was constrained because schools, hospitals, buses, hotels, restaurants, churches, and even the YMCAs were all segregated.

The passage of the Civil Rights Act sent me on a journey that I am still walking today. In 1987, I marched with Hosea Williams to integrate Forsyth County. In 1993, I organized the movement to protest the Cobb County anti-gay resolution. By 1994, 30 years ago, I began to lead the cause to completely exonerate Leo Frank, an innocent man who was lynched in Marietta in 1915.

In the rich red clay of Georgia, long before Atlanta earned its reputation as the “City Too Busy to Hate,” the seeds of Black mobility and viability were planted. Esteemed institutions like Morehouse, Spelman, Morris Brown College, Clark College, and Atlanta University attracted talented Black minds from across the African diaspora to Atlanta. Just as the converging rail lines of Terminus brought economic development to the area, the Atlanta University Center has served as a vital artery for Black cultural, political, and spiritual growth.

When I was in high school, my teacher overheard a classmate mention that I’m Palestinian. He pulled me into the hallway to interrogate me to make sure my family and I didn’t have ties to Hamas. There was no reason for him to believe this other than my identity. This kind of discrimination would color my entire life, but as a result, it forced me to see the systemic injustices around us.

As a Black ’90s baby growing up in Augusta, Georgia, my elders assured me that most major victories against systemic oppression had been won. Racism stood little chance of blocking me from a successful life, and my privileges—coming from a two-parent, middle-class household and excelling in school—would make me damn near invincible. But discovering my queerness at an early age shattered any certainty of an easy life.