Tag: race

Race has always been the throughline in every significant discussion about Atlanta, but as the metro area grows ever more diverse, the story is much more than black and white

On a summer morning in 1967, Lorenzo “Lo” Jelks walked into the WSB-TV studios for his first day of work. That wouldn’t have been noteworthy, except that Jelks, an American descendant of enslaved Africans, would be the first black on-air reporter at what was then (and now) one of the largest television stations in the Southeast.

Someday a Democrat will win a statewide office in Georgia. It’s a statistical inevitability as the state continues to diversify. That time could be as soon as November 6, as Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams seems to be riding a national blue wave that could lift her above Republican gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp.

Hosea Williams was standing below the Memphis motel balcony when he saw his friend and mentor, Martin Luther King Jr., assassinated. Williams, a pugnacious lieutenant in the civil rights movement, the bad cop to Andrew Young’s good cop, wondered “whether America lost its last chance.”

Just few weeks into her term, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms speaks out about the election, her efforts to raise $1 billion for affordable housing, whether she’ll endorse in the governor’s race, and the sexism she encounters as a woman who, besides being a mother of four, is the mayor of Georgia’s largest city.

Hank Klibanoff’s students are talking about running. Specifically, why an innocent black teenager would run from white cops in Macon in 1962. Simone Senibaldi, a senior, says, “The thing about running—for me and people that I know who are black—is that whenever cops are around, you run, regardless of whether you’re innocent or guilty.”

MODA launches the Lemonade Project tonight, a year-long series of discussions on race, gender, class, and identity, centered on Beyoncé's sixth solo album.

Since Kasim Reed took office, more than 20,000 white transplants have moved inside the city limits. That influx, combined with the past decade’s foreclosure crisis that disproportionately affected black residents, means today the city’s black population is roughly 50 percent, compared with 67 percent in 1990.

The Atlantic correspondent and MacArthur ‘Genius’ makes a stop at the Carter Center to promote his new book.

Barnes, a throwback to Georgia’s once mighty but now dismantled Democratic machine, was eager to talk about the South’s contradictions. And, as the governor who oversaw the revamp of Georgia’s state flag back in 2001—which removed the battle emblem and arguably cost him reelection in 2002—few are more uniquely qualified.