COMMUNITY
YOUTH
DeKalb County Police added 15 officers to its roster after their graduation from the Police Academy on Feb. 23. 5
Four powerhouse speakers gave female students at Southwest DeKalb HIgh Shool tips on choosing a career path . 6
New to the ranks
Priming for success
Let’s Keep DeKalb Peachy Clean Please Don’t Litter Our Streets and Highways
EAST ATLANTA • DECATUR • STONE MOUNTAIN • LITHONIA • AVONDALE ESTATES • CLARKSTON • ELLENWOOD • PINE LAKE • REDAN • SCOTTDALE • TUCKER • STONECREST
Copyright © 2018 CrossRoadsNews, Inc.
March 3, 2018
Volume 23, Number 44
www.crossroadsnews.com
Greenhaven bill dead, organizers to discuss what’s next By Jennifer Ffrench Parker
It is back to drawing board for organizers of the city of Greenhaven after the bill seeking a referendum on the proposed city failed to make it out of committee on the General Assembly’s crossover day. House Bill 644, which was seeking a referendum on the proposed 126-square-mile city with a population of nearly 300,000, died Feb. 28 without a sponsor, dashing the fouryear hopes of organizers. Dr. Kathryn Rice, who has led the effort since 2014, said that what happened at the Georgia Capitol this week was voter suppression.
“It’s for the people to decide,” she said. “We deserved the right to vote.” In the final days of maneuvering, Rep. Billy Mitchell, who had sponsored HB 644, removed his name from the bill which had no sponsors in Kathryn Rice the Senate. Rice said that DeKalb County’s AfricanAmerican Democrats failed the voters. “I am frustrated and very disappointed in the dysfunction that the DeKalb Delegation showed,” she said. Rice said the Greenhaven Team is meet-
ing March 3 to discuss their options. “HB644 is dead,” she said. “We have to decide if we want to try again next year.” But not everyone was sad about the bill’s demise. Ed Williams Ed Williams, a staunch opponent of Greenhaven, said they do not believe cityhood is the solution to the area’s problems. “We are extremely pleased that the Greenhaven cityhood bill did not make it out of the Georgia House of Representatives,” he
said in a press release. “We do not want to trade our suburban communities for an urban jungle. We do not want more crime, corruption, and government. We want better leadership and collaboration all over DeKalb.” Williams, who is chairman of the Citizens Against Cityhood in DeKalb, said he hopes the Georgia General Assembly will reform the cityhood process before it allows any other cityhood or annexation bills to be passed. “We hope DeKalb County will have completed its study on how cities impact its services and budget before any other cities are allowed to be created,” he said.
First state park for blacks celebrates founders Atkinsons built a refuge despite segregation
John Loyd Atkinson Sr., with the help of his family, built the George Washington Carver Park for Negroes on Lake Allatoona as a place for black people, who were not allowed to enter white state parks.
By Jennifer Ffrench Parker
As a small child, Charles Atkinson frolicked in the cool waters of Lake Allatoona and took boat rides with his siblings and father, John Loyd Atkinson Sr. He was too young to realize the groundbreaking, historic work his family was doing at the George Washington Carver Park for Negroes in Bartow County, Ga. Atkinson, who lived in Decatur for more than 20 years, was born in 1950 – the same year his father became superintendent of Georgia’s first park for blacks. “We had fun riding my daddy’s boat,” Atkinson recalled on Feb. 26, three days after the Cartersville-Bartow County Convention Visitors Bureau recognized his late mother, Bessie Louise Evans Atkinson, with a plaque during George Washington Carver Park Memories Day, held annually in February to celebrate Black History Month. His father, who was the park’s superintendent from 1950 to 1958, got the job after spending five years pushing to create a resort for blacks, who were not welcome at Georgia’s segregated state parks in the 1950s and 60s. A Tuskegee Airman, Atkinson returned to Georgia in 1943 after his discharge from the Army, determined to establish a resort for blacks, similar to America Beach in Jacksonville, Fla. He encountered obstacles everywhere he turned. But when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers created Lake Allatoona, he saw his opportunity. Atkinson said his father leased 345 acres on the lake, off U.S. 41 near Acworth and Cartersville, for 25 years from the Corps to create his resort. “But Bartow County would not give him
John Loyd Atkinson Sr. and Bessie Atkinson managed the park until 1958.
a permit to create the resort,” said Atkinson, who is John Loyd Sr. and Bessie’s fourth child. In the midst of protests from black civic groups and returning World War II veterans complaining about the lack of facilities for blacks, Atkinson Sr. was able to convince Gov. Herman Talmadge, a staunch supporter of racial segregation, to establish a state park for Negroes.
Tamadge put Atkinson in charge of it, making him the first black superintendent of a Georgia park for negroes. But though the park was separate, it was far from equal. For one, Atkinson, the family’s historian, said the designation was the sum total of the help that the state provided. His father, with the help of his family, had to do it all. “He wanted to create a beach for blacks to go to,” Atkinson said. “You had no place to learn to swim. There was a pool in Washington Park in Atlanta but not everyone could get there.” His father hauled hundreds of tons of sand, in a pickup he owned, to create a sandy beach on the shores of the lake and pressed his family into spreading buckets of sand along the lake’s shoreline. He also built a clubhouse, beach house, playground, boat ramps, concession stand
and the house his family lived in during the summer when the park was open. On an early trip to the state seeking help to build toilets at the park, Atkinson said a state worker told his father that “y’all can go out there and piss behind a tree.’ “They were ugly back then,” Atkinson said. The family lived in Atlanta in a house his father built, but spent summers at the park. Atkinson said he and his siblings all had to work in the park. “We had chores,” he said. “My older brothers and sister more than me because I was little. We had to clean up the area, pick up trash. Oh yes, we had to work every day.” His father was superintendent until 1958 when illness forced him to quit. Please see CARVER, page 4