Civil War to Civil Rights

Civil War to Civil Rights: atlanta stories

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Published May 2015 by The Wren’s Nest Publishing Company ©2015 All rights reserved by the authors and The Wren’s Nest

First Edition The Wren’s Nest 1050 Ralph David Abernathy Blvd SW Atlanta, GA 30310 404.753.7735 www.wrensnest.org

Cover Design: Copeland Advertising Interior Design: Copeland Advertising Copy Editing: Sue Gilman, Diana Guyton, Jessie Matheson, Sarah Newman, Jason Wiggins, and Lauren Wiginton Photography: Tin Can Photography Printed in Alpharetta, Georgia by Booklogix Disclaimer: All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in these stories are either products of the authors’ imaginations or are used with creative license.

Table of Contents For the Sesquicentennial Anniversary

by Sue Gilman

A Narrative

1

by Lauren Wiginton

5

LIFE + DEATH

7

Dolus

by Rachel Vahey

A Soldier and a General: Pierre Beauregard and the Battle of Shiloh

by Googie Daniels

Brothers Divided:The Woeful Tale of Sam and Joe

by Wanzie Diedre Ivey

A Name in Diary

by Googie Daniels

Prejudice

by Molly Yates

The Olive Down South

by Nathan Collier

Battle of Palmetto Ranch

by Jenna Hanes

9 13 19 21 26 29 34

REALITY + PERCEPTION The Many Battles of Atlanta 150 Years After the Fight, Our Struggles Continue.

by Fletcher Moore

True to Our God; True to Our Native Land

by Akbar Imhotep

Living Inside the Jar

by Lauren Odom

Rev. Dr. Joseph Lowery

by Kalin Thomas

The Movement Lives: The Great Speckled Bird Responds to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Death

by Cat Williams

37

39

52 55 61

67

HEALING + PAIN Colors of War

by Megan McHugh

Civil War Brothers: The Reunion

by Akbar Imhotep

Tuskegee Airmen Honored by City Hall

by Kalin Thomas

The Path to Equality

by Mia Valdez

Following in Their Footsteps

by Tyrique Barnett

Discovery in the King Center

by Kitti Murray

Letters from Your Pal, C.T. Vivian

by Priya Hemphill

About The Wren’s Nest About the Authors

73

75 81 85 89 93 99 103

For the Sesquicentennial Anniversary

by Sue Gilman

2014 is the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Atlanta. The City of Atlanta Civil War Sesquicentennial Commission (say that three times fast) was created to support and coordinate the activities and events of all the city’s historic institutions commemorating the anniversary. As Executive Director of The Wren’s Nest, I was invited to be a member of the Commission by the Chair, Councilwoman Natalyn Archibong.

Over several months we worked together to coordinate activities, to design a logo, and to agree on a theme — Civil War to Civil Rights: 150 Years. As I listened to the many interesting and educational events being planned, I just wasn’t sure how we might contribute. Unlike the other institutions, The Wren’s Nest doesn’t have a clear and direct relationship to the war. Joel Chandler Harris was a teenage boy working as a typesetter on a plantation just outside Eatonton, Georgia during the war, listening to the slaves tell the stories of Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox. What later became his historic home in West End wasn’t even built until 1870.

Talking this over with our Education Director, Jessie Matheson, it came clear. We could publish a book! Over the last eight years, the Wren’s Nest Publishing Company has published more than a dozen student-written books. Our Scribes Program for middle school students, in particular, has focused on historical fiction based in Atlanta. We were sure our Scribes, their mentors, and other Atlanta writers would be interested in contributing.

We were already talking with Lauren Wiginton at Copeland Advertising about an e-book collaboration. This seemed like the perfect opportunity. We were off!

In addition to stories, we knew we wanted images to really make the book come to life. We contacted Erin Chupp Sintos at Tin Can Photography, whom we have worked with before.

After reading the stories, Erin set out to shoot. Her experiences walking the historical grounds of the city are reflected in her deeply-rooted, organic, and completely beautiful photographs, all shot on film. They accompany the written pieces like a musical score.

The work in this book is varied and provocative, full of hope and love, despair, anger, and humor. The writers are novelists, poets, men, women, and children of a variety of ethnicities and ages. They are storytellers, teachers, bloggers, and dreamers. Each brings their own unique passion and perspective. I hope you find this collection as informative and inspiring as I have.

1

2

Our Fellow City of Atlanta Civil War Sesquicentennial Commission Members Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs Atlanta City Council President’s Office District 5 Councilmember Natalyn Archibong Buckhead Heritage Society B*ATL Commemorative Organization Oakland Cemetery Atlanta History Center/Margaret Mitchell House The Carter Center Atlanta Preservation Center Atlanta Convention & Visitors Bureau National Center for Civil and Human Rights Utoy Creek Ezra Church Georgia Civil War Commission

3

A Narrative

by Lauren Wiginton The journey from Civil War to Civil Rights is not an easy one to tell, either narratively or thematically. This journey is and has been intimately involved in shaping countless individuals’ identities and experiences. It is a subject that, when discussed with honesty and compassion, can have a profound effect on our relationships and communities.

It is a particularly sensitive time to publish a book dealing with this subject matter, but this topic has long been both difficult and necessary to discuss. Some of the characters in these stories are involved in battles during the American Civil War in the mid 19th century, fighting among injustices in an effort to end them. Other stories recount more recent battles against and among enduring injustices during the era of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. While the individual struggles may vary on the surface and be separated by a great many years, the ultimate struggle is profoundly the same.

understand their place in the ongoing narrative of race, discrimination, equality, politics, and community.

In order to approach this journey and its myriad of voices in an inclusive and interesting way, we chose a thematic approach based on three dualities: life and death, reality and perception, and healing and pain. The stories themselves carved out the thematic flow of the book and speak to a range of issues from war to friendship. The Wren’s Nest Education Director, Jessie Matheson, thoughtfully introduces each section throughout the book to expound upon each of these themes.

We hope you enjoy and find value in this particular path carved on a journey from Civil War to Civil Rights.

This collection of stories in no way attempts to paint a holistic or complete account of America’s journey from Civil War to Civil Rights, or even that of Atlanta’s. Many important stories have undoubtedly been lost or forgotten even in the most dense historical accounts. What this collection of stories does attempt to do is help us imagine how individual, often ordinary citizens could have felt, thought, or experienced during times of great uncertainty and change. Some stories give us insight into our contemporaries’ thoughts and experiences, how they see themselves in this history and

5

LIFE + DEATH Once called Terminus because it was the final stop for the railroad, Atlanta has always been a place of ends and beginnings. Red-breasted and battle born, Atlanta has been rebirthed numerous times through war, reconstruction, and the fight for equality.

Beginning with events leading up to Sherman’s March on Atlanta, this section meditates on life and death and explores how the city has been shaped by these themes.

7

Dolus

by Rachel Vahey Thunder booms overhead. Its monstrous roar almost masks the sounds of gunfire and shouts of pain from the men receiving balls of lead fired from those guns. But it doesn’t, and I can still hear them. Their echoes reverberate in my head, torturing me, reminding me. Their individual strains dance on my nerves like the terrified puppets we have become.

As delicate diamonds fall from the sky, I momentarily pause in my dead sprint to admire the glistening gems. I hold out my hands and let thousands of dollars’ worth of the stones collect in my hands. Their clarity is impeccable, and I am mesmerized by their ability to reflect the startling beauty of the gathering onyx clouds above.

at me the first day of basic as my name was called from the long list of boys who were born a year too soon. I run while immaculate diamonds slice at my exposed skin. I run as lightning flashes, not caring if I am its next victim. I just run.

Until I hear my name. I stumble to a halt and turn around to find the source, where I come to see the face of my C.O. two hundred feet behind me. His presence confuses me, but before I can unravel the mystery of his decision to follow me, I feel white hot pain explode in my right thigh. I grip it as if that will stop the agony, only to find liquid rubies seep between my fingers, down the length of my dirtied, colorless uniform. I look up to the realization that he has shot me.

Because I am a deserter. Desertion: punishable by death.

That small moment of distraction doesn’t last for long. Lightning strikes across the field and a new cry joins the harmony of dying soldiers’ last pleas to an inattentive god. That interruption brings me back to the horrifying reality of where I stand. I stare again into the collection of flawless diamonds in my hands only to see my own reflection. Mud-covered cheeks and azure eyes of a seventeen-year-old boy who has seen too much bore into my soul. Those eyes swim with pooling tears, fearful and angry because of what is to come and what has already transpired. In that moment I forget everything anyone has ever told me about this war. A total blankness, a sort of gemlike lucidity, sweeps across my mind. So, I run.

If he thinks he will kill me before I escape this godforsaken place, he has thought wrong. I grit my teeth, spin on my heel, and start to run. If you can call it that. It’s more of a lopsided jog, but if it gets me out of here, I can deal with the jarring movement of my legs. My silence is ended as I let out a scream as the next ice cold bullet pierces my skin. I’m thrown to the ground by the force of the impact, but also because my legs aren’t moving anymore. Two epicenters of pain radiate from my thigh and spine, but I continue on in my escape. I pull myself forward inches at a time by my elbows, but it isn’t far or fast enough.

I run, away. Away from the shouts and gunfire and cannons and weapons and death and decay. I run. And run. All I can hear is the pounding of my feet in ill-fitting shoes thrown

The sloshing of boots through mud reaches my ears and soon the mud splashes on my cheeks. I hardly register the feeling; all I can concentrate on is the throbbing of my body. A hand 9

grips my shoulder and roughly flips me onto my back, where I yell once more.

“I expected better of you.”

Spots are beginning to cover my vision, but I can make out the hazy outline of Colonel Dolus standing above me.

Another flare of searing pain explodes in my left shoulder.

Salty tears burn as they wash across the open skin of my cheeks. I nearly bite through my lip as I suppress another roar.

My senses are fading, but the click of the hammer brings me momentary clarity. I’m staring down the muzzle of Dolus’s pistol into the hardness of his grey eyes.

“And I you… Sir,” I spit out before he pulls the trigger. In the split second before his pointer finger ends my life, I wonder which side is the just side in war. I come to the conclusion that no such thing exists as I stare up into a sky full of diamonds.

One last bang resounds in my ears, and I’m enveloped by the darkness of the peace I was promised by fighting this war.

10

A Soldier and a General:

Pierre Beauregard and the Battle of Shiloh

by Googie Daniels

At half past two in the afternoon on April 6, 1862, General Albert Sidney Johnston led a charge on the right flank straight into the Hornet’s Nest1 at the Battle of Shiloh, exposing himself to Union fire. A bullet whizzed past several pin oak trees before nicking an artery in his leg. The world started slipping away from General Johnston, and the man slumped down in his saddle, falling into the nearby arms of the governor of Tennessee. Within minutes, death lulled the general into an eternal slumber.2 When the news reached second in command, General Pierre G. T. Beauregard, the Louisianan wasted no time in leading another charge. Waving his hat in the air and plunging into the marshy, wooded terrain of western Tennessee, Beauregard hollered, “On, on my brave boys, and the day is ours!”3 To an outside observer, the mustached man galloping full speed ahead into enemy territory could very well have been just another soldier. Beauregard kept a simple dress, a plain blue coat reused from his previous years in the United States Army. Hardly any accolades decorated his chest.4 The most ostentatious thing about the general from Louisiana was his name: Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard.5 Aside from that, the general prescribed to the features of a typical soldier.

“Lithe and sinewy” in stature6 and sporting a tan face, Beauregard’s form mirrored that of “a General of the field, and not of the closet.”7 Mentally, though, Beauregard fell nothing short of an intellectual, possessing the keen awareness and

tactical skills necessary to successfully lead an army. Sharing the eyes of a “bloodhound with his fighting instincts asleep, but ready at any moment to be strung for action.” 8 Beauregard kept careful watch over whatever territory he occupied. He scrutinized everything, always either anticipating a forthcoming attack against his forces or else planning a maneuver of his own. The mental strain of attention and care “ploughed […] inexorable furrows” in his brow,9 visually documenting Beauregard’s total consciousness and unyielding dedication to his nation.

Passing the spot where Johnston fell from his horse, Beauregard’s thoughts turned to the previous night’s discussion. The regiments had failed to set up camp just outside of Shiloh until three days after their anticipated arrival date. Miscommunications stalled the 25 mile march, and by the time the troops reached their destination, night blanketed the terrain.

Beauregard advised Johnston against the attack, considering the state of the fatigued soldiers. Beauregard also expressed concern over the delay of the march and the measures soldiers took in testing wet gunpowder by firing off their guns. Surely “the enemy would be now found formidably intrenched [sic] and ready for the attack.” Johnston considered the general’s comments about the tired soldiering, but ultimately settled on carrying out the attack, believing the element of surprise remained an intact advantage.10 Obedient and unquestioning of his superior, Beauregard accepted Johnston’s decision and prepared the men for battle. The troops awoke at 3 a.m. the 13

next morning and set out on their surprise venture. Against all odds of Beauregard’s logical concerns, Grant’s army proved unprepared for the battle and instantly began a retreat.

Union generals managed to organize the troops into an orderly enough fashion to take a stand against the Rebel army, but not before losing two miles of ground from where they had started that morning.

While the Confederates clearly had the upper hand in the skirmish, they did not boast a more organized ensemble.

Beauregard examined the “straggling and pillage which, for a time, defied all remonstrance and all efforts of coercion” on the battlefield. “Disorder and plunder” raged around the camp and battlegrounds, a symptom of the soldiers “exhausted from incessant fighting and marching.” Even the officers in charge failed to exercise comprehensive and effective measures of attack. Efforts to reorganize the lines failed, sending out a “series of disjointed assaults […] easily broken” in place of one successful front.

After weighing his options and evaluating the “steady and heavy rolls of musketry” from the enemy, Beauregard opted to “withdraw the troops gradually from the front an[d] reorganize them, to resume the offensive on the seventh [of April] and complete [the] victory over Grant.”11

to push any boundaries. Away from battle, even Beauregard himself had a hard time seeing the difference between his subordinates and himself. One evening Beauregard entered his tent and saw a soldier scribbling away at a desk. The soldier looked up and realized he occupied Beauregard’s desk.

An apology came running from the man’s mouth. Exposing a “good-humored smile,” Beauregard said, “Sit down and finish your letter, my friend. You are very welcome, and can always come in here when you wish to write.”13 The general enjoyed mingling with the troops. He would even stoop down and light his cigar in their camp fires as they all sat around and exchanged stories.14 As far as Beauregard was concerned, he fought as they fought and lived as they lived. Authority and rank only came into play when shells riddled the air and oxygen tasted like gunpowder in their lungs.

Beauregard’s grandeur shone when he led his troops. While shorter than the average man at the time, one newspaper noted that “his appearance betokens health and vigor, and you can not feel that you are in the presence of a small man in any respect, when in his.” 15 This natural powerful presence unfurled itself when the cry of battle reverberated across the earth. No longer merely one man amongst many, Beauregard easily set himself apart from others. In doing so, Beauregard conveyed a precise, conscious message to his men: Follow my orders in battle. I am in charge. But like you, I, too, take the field and so, when the dust settles and the day is done, let us recognize our similarities and equality as soldiers.

let us recognize our similarities and equality as soldiers

Back at the Confederate camp, dissatisfied grumbling rose from the men. Lieutenant L.D. Young vented his frustrations regarding the decision to fall back: “Why, oh why, did Beauregard not allow us to finish the day’s work so gloriously begun by Johnston?”12 Of course, none of the troops brought their complaints to Beauregard that night. Field soldiers ranked far inferior to the general, and in battle they knew not 14

Maybe Beauregard’s subordinates did not understand the maneuver of stalling the final push, but Beauregard believed it would work out best in the end. After a night’s rest, Beauregard planned on leading the Rebs to another decisive

charge against Grant’s troops. Anticipating a victory, he dashed off a telegram and sent it away to Richmond: “After a severe battle of ten hours [… we] gained a complete victory, driving the enemy from every position.” 16 At the same time, on enemy lines, Buell’s brigades arrived to reinforce Grant’s army.17 The reinforcements would arrive in the morning, and Beauregard’s wise decision to postpone the battle would cost the South the victory so nearly theirs.

The Union troops poured across Rebel lines at 6 a.m. on April 7th. Finding themselves in the exact same position as their enemies on the previous morning, the Rebs took several moments to gather themselves. When they did, they counterattacked in full force. Beauregard himself led a charge, gallantly boasting the flag of Louisiana.18 The headstrong efforts turned out to be futile. Buell’s fresh troops outnumbered the Confederate army. Foreseeing a bloody defeat, Beauregard called a retreat and the army resettled on the quiet grounds of Corinth.19 In Richmond, upon hearing the news, President Jefferson Davis went red in the face. Shiloh had all the makings of a certain victory, but two days after the first shots rang out all Beauregard managed to achieve was an uncontested retreat.20 The Battle of Shiloh did nothing but aggravate the tension between Davis and Beauregard further. A year earlier, following the surprising victory at Manassas, General Beauregard’s official battle report found its way into the Charleston Mercury. It implied that Davis, by rejecting Beauregard’s idea of combining two Confederate armies, denied the South the possibility (and likelihood) of capturing Washington.21 From that point on, Davis marked a target on Beauregard’s back. Once the president engaged in a feud, he did not back down.22 Davis slighted Beauregard by downplaying his importance, even refusing to refer to him directly, supplementing the title of “the commanding general” in place of his flamboyant name.23 In fact, Beauregard only found himself in

the western engagements of Tennessee after Davis banished the general as far away from Richmond as he could. So, after the Battle of Shiloh, when the war-weary general embarked on sick leave to Alabama, Davis pounced. On June 20, 1862, General Braxton Bragg officially replaced Beauregard as Commanding General of the Army of Tennessee.24 Following his replacement, Beauregard returned to South Carolina — where years before he was dubbed the Hero of Sumter — and defended Charleston against a series of Union attacks. He passed his time in Charleston moderately unrecognized, a lasting effect of his denouncement by Davis. In June of 1864, however, Beauregard’s name once more found its way onto people’s lips as he gallantly defended Petersburg, Virginia from the attacking Yankee forces. His interference at Petersburg saved the Confederate capital of Richmond from falling.25 Most certainly a man capable of brilliant action, Beauregard’s biggest flaw lay in that he thought too much. He took too much into consideration before striking. If wars ran by textbook algorithms, Beauregard would have been the one to lead the South to a resounding victory; the solider-general knew what should have been best; it just didn’t always turn out that way.

15

Endnotes J. Cutler Andrews, The South Reports the Civil War, 141: An “old country lane along the crest of a gentle rise” where a “hard core of resistance” of Union soldiers maintained a defensive advantage over the attacking Confederates.

1

Richard Ramsey Hancock, “Diary of Richard Ramsey Hancock, April, 1862,” in Hancock’s Diary, or, A History of the Second Tennessee Confederate Cavalry: with Sketches of First and Seventh Battalions, 151.

9

Richard Ramsey Hancock, “Diary of Richard Ramsey Hancock, April, 1862,” in Hancock’s Diary, or, A History of the Second Tennessee Confederate Cavalry : with Sketches of First and Seventh Battalions, 143.

10

2

Pierre Beauregard in Otto Eisenschiml’s and Ralph Newman’s Eyewitness: The Civil War as We Lived It, 194-195.

11

J. Cutler Andrews, The South Reports the Civil War, 141.

12

John Esten Cooke, Wearing of the Gray: Being Personal Portraits, Scenes & Adventures of the War, ed. Philip Van Doren Stern, 73.

13

Several documents nickname Beauregard the Creole General. Creole denotes a person of mixed race. Certainly, at this time and in the southern United States, that is something the country would condemn Beauregard for. The moniker history has laid the general claim to is fascinating, heightened by the fact that Beauregard lived during the Civil War, in which race was the key factor. Cajun seems like it would be more appropriate. Still, Cooke, Andrews, and undoubtedly several other sources, continuously refer to Beauregard as a Creole.

14

3

4

5

John Esten Cooke, Wearing of the Gray: Being Personal Portraits, Scenes & Adventures of the War, ed. Philip Van Doren Stern, 74.

6

J. Cutler Andrews, The South Reports the Civil War, 72.

7

John Esten Cooke, Wearing of the Gray: Being Personal Portraits, Scenes & Adventures of the War, ed. Philip Van Doren Stern, 76.

8

16

Ibid, 83-84.

Diary entry of L.D. Young, Ibid, 193.

John Esten Cooke, Wearing of the Gray: Being Personal Portraits, Scenes & Adventures of the War, ed. Philip Van Doren Stern, 80.

Ibid, 77.

J. Cutler Andrews, The South Reports the Civil War, 72.

15

James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 412.

16

Ibid, 412.

17

Richard Ramsey Hancock, “Diary of Richard Ramsey Hancock, April, 1862,” in Hancock’s Diary, or, A History of the Second Tennessee Confederate Cavalry : with Sketches of First and Seventh Battalions, 156.

18

Pierre Beauregard in Otto Eisenschiml’s and Ralph Newman’s Eyewitness: The Civil War as We Lived It, 196: Beauregard defended his retreat in the following entry: “To indulge a hope of success with these fearful odds against me would have been to show a lack of judgment. The die, however, was cast. The only plan left, I thought, was to fight so as

19

Bibliography to deceive the enemy as to my intentions, and to effect an orderly, safe and honorable retreat.”

Andrews, J. Cutler. The South Reports the Civil War. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970.

Letter from Ulysses Grant in Otto Eisenschiml and Ralph Newman’s Eyewitness: The Civil War as We Lived It, 197.

Grant explains why he did not order the Confederates followed: “I wanted to pursue but had not the heart to order the men who had fought desperately for two days, lying in the mud and rain whenever not fighting, and I did not feel disposed positively to order Buell or any part of his command to pursue.”

“P.G.T. Beauregard.” Civil War Trust. Accessed November 24, 2013. http://www.civilwar.org/education/history/biographies/p-g-t-beauregard.html.

20

J. Cutler Andrews, The South Reports the Civil War, 101.

21

James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 366.

22

At a dinner in South Carolina, Davis took the time to thank several men who contributed to the attack on Fort Sumter.

He neglected to mention Beauregard by name, an omission all those in attendance noted, seeing as how Beauregard himself officially ordered the firing on Sumter. An additional reference is written in Davis’ own hand in the “Letter from Jefferson Finis Davis, April 8, 1862”: “[W]e may well conclude that one common spirit of unflinching bravery and devotion to our country’s cause must have animated every breast, from that of the Commanding General to that of the humblest patriot who served in the ranks.”

23

Cooke, John Esten. Wearing of the Gray: Being Personal Portraits, Scenes & Adventures of the War. Edited by Philip Van Doren Stern. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1959.

Davis, Jefferson Finis. “Letter from Jefferson Finis Davis, April 8, 1862” in A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Confederacy, Including the Diplomatic Correspondence, 1861-1865.

Richardson, James D., comp. Nashville: United States Publishing Company, 1905.

Eisenschiml, Otto and Ralph Newman. Eyewitness: The Civil War as We Lived It. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1956.

Hancock, Richard Ramsey. “Diary of Richard Ramsey Hancock, April, 1862” in Hancock’s Diary, or, A History of the Second Tennessee Confederate Cavalry: with Sketches of First and Seventh Battalions. Nashville: Brandon Print Co. 1887.

McPherson, James. Battle Cry of Freedom. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

J. Cutler Andrews, The South Reports the Civil War, 232.

24

“P.G.T. Beauregard,” Civil War Trust, accessed November 24, 2013, http://www.civilwar.org/education/history/biographies/p-g-t-beauregard.html.

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Brothers Divided:

The Woeful Tale of Sam and Joe

by Wanzie Diedre Ivey

Two inseparable brothers from the time they were born once lived happily together on acres of plantation land. Never had any thought come to them of taking the life of their fellow man. The younger one was Sam and the big one was Joe. Word got out something would change the life they’d known. The Union army was a’ coming setting fire and burning down everything every step of the way through enemy lines. It was the effects of the unsettling war that had brother against brother because a difference of opinion dwelt in their minds. The two brothers looked terribly at each other.

“There could never be anything that would make me hate my brother!” one of them exclaimed. The other bobbed his head nodding to agree. You see it all started from a difference of opinion. There was money involved and the power would go to the ones who were winning. The brothers were raised to work an honest living. They worked their own fields and cultivated fruits that were God-given. However, there were other farmers in the area who were not farmers at all; they used others to perform the labors of the land, while they sat back and made sure the laborers obeyed, and if not, would punish them with their own hands. These people were enslaved against their will. For as long as the brothers could remember, they were always considered less than a woman or man, more like an animal than a gender. The North was a’coming to attempt to put it all to an end and hopefully mend the country together again. When the older brother, Joe, informed his younger brother about his plans to go and

help with this Emancipation, he couldn’t help but notice Sam’s irritation. His younger brother began to spew out a very hateful attitude. He became enraged because he felt that they belonged in a cage. He sounded like Pa with his derogatory views. This was a subject that they never discussed amongst them two. Until then Joe had felt that everything about them was conjoined. The youthful Sam went on to say there was no way that they would continue to be kin if Joe went on with these shenanigans. Joe felt the pain of a broken heart because he knew that his decision would tear them apart. He had to do what was right and fight for equality of all men. He had a duty to break the generational curse and make sure it was not passed on to cloud the judgment of future children. The once inseparable brothers became as distant as night and day. In modern times, poor Joe’s struggle is still alive and rights that he was willing to fight for exist today: a very bittersweet end to this tale of dismay.

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A Name in Diary

by Googie Daniels

June 3. Cold Harbor. I was killed.

Arthur Rodway looked down at the words he just wrote in his diary. He knew it was coming. Too many had died for him to believe otherwise. It was a massacre…

“I wish I could hold onto it longer.” Arthur’s eyes stayed on the slip of paper. He watched Thomas’ fingers trace over the family’s smiles, fold the paper carefully, and slip the illustration back into his waistband. Arthur added, “I really wish I could…”

April 1864

May 1864

Arthur joined the Army of the Potomac after the First Battle of Bull Run. The Union had lost the battle, he had no family…

It made sense for him to enlist. He figured if the army needed him when no one else did, it was the least he could do. It was all he had to do, really. He thought he’d see the country when he joined, but his assignment hardly took him out of the state of Virginia.

Arthur stood at the gate of a plantation house. The grounds were uncared for and several windows were broken. The house itself needed tending to as well, but there was no one there to do that — only hundreds of troops passing by, taking what they wanted, leaving behind the bare bones. Still, Arthur could not help thinking about why a house needed to be so big. Because whoever lives there has a family, he reminded himself. Because whoever lives there has somebody.

Thomas was there for the opposite reason: he had everything to lose. That’s why he needed to protect them.

“Anabel and I are going to have another child when I get back.

A boy, hopefully.”

“Are you not going inside?” Thomas asked.

Arthur met Thomas Black at Gettysburg. He was the most determined soldier he’d ever met. Unlike Arthur, Thomas actually believed in the war. Thomas was fighting for the future. Arthur was just fighting to busy his body.

“I bet he’ll be as strong as your boy now. But not half as cute as your girl, Margaret,” Arthur said. He passed the handdrawn illustration back to his friend.

“Not gonna take a peek?” Thomas goaded.

“Ain’t that a pretty picture?”

“Anything good?”

21

“A lot of books. The men before us must have gotten all the good stuff,” Thomas said.

“Did you find anything?”

“I dug up a jewelry box in one of the bedrooms. What am I going to do with jewelry?” Thomas snorted.

“You could send it back to Anabel,” Arthur suggested.

Thomas shrugged. “The only thing Anabel wants me bringing back from the war is myself.” A smile ticked onto his lips.

Arthur smiled as well. It must be nice to have someone… “I’m going to go find some water,” Thomas informed Arthur. He turned and walked away from the plantation grounds.

Arthur stood at the gate for a few more minutes before deciding to enter the edifice. A woman was standing inside the door, indignant and proper. Arthur avoided making eye contact, embarrassed. He hated violating people’s homes, but Thomas said there were books, and Arthur could use a distraction from everything going on around him.

Arthur walked into a large room and scanned the walls. Half of them shelved row after row of novels. He ran his fingers over the spine of a few of them, waiting for a title to tickle his fancy. The bulk of them were medical books. She must be married to a doctor… Where he is now? Servicing the troops, acting as surgeon?

Arthur went to a desk nestled in the corner of the room and pulled out a drawer. He picked up a few pencils, securing them in his jacket pocket. In the next drawer he found a leather-bound diary. This would be a proper upgrade to the loose paper I use now… Arthur opened it. The book was empty.

Arthur weighed the diary in his hands for a moment. He decided to take it. On his way out he tipped his hat to the 22

woman at the door and apologized. He half thought she would spit at him, but she didn’t. She was too much of a lady.

He thought about how her husband was away. How she was alone, just like he was… Halfway across the porch Arthur turned back to the house. The woman stiffened as he retraced his steps. Fear crept onto her face.

“Miss, I intend you no harm,” Arthur tried to assure her. He took a step closer to her. The terror in her expression became more apparent. Arthur wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake her, yell at her. Don’t be so scared! He wasn’t going to hurt her. He wasn’t going to do anything half as bad as what the other soldiers did. Why can’t she appreciate how delicate I’m being?

Arthur craned his neck down so his face was level with the woman’s. He would have felt her breath on his lips had all the oxygen not caught in the back of her throat. Arthur’s eyes roamed over her cheeks, her nose, her lips. He turned his attention to her eyes, but they were shut tight now. Finally, he put his mouth on hers. He kissed her. She did not kiss back.

Still, it felt so nice. He kissed her more deeply. It felt so nice.

Arthur pulled away. Tears stained the woman’s face. Her eyes remained closed. Her mouth began to tremble. Arthur said nothing and turned away. It must be nice to have someone…

June 1864 “How’s the foot?” Arthur asked.

Thomas extended his leg towards his friend. Arthur was able to discern bloodied and yellowed bandages wrapped from the toes on his right foot to his ankle. “It’s not bad,” Thomas said.

“My arms hurt more from digging the trench at the cross-

road than from the silly old shrapnel,” he added with a smile.

Arthur laughed.

“Black!” a voice bellowed. Thomas turned to the sound.

“Pack up. We’re marching with Hancock,” a man instructed.

Thomas nodded his head in recognition and rose from his place on the ground.

“Marching now?” Arthur asked. “The sun’s just about to set.”

“You know how it works,” Thomas said. “We’ll get into position, wait for daylight, and we’ll have the upper hand. If we don’t, I’m sure you bunch will come charging after us anyway.”

“Mind your foot,” Arthur commented. Thomas smiled and left.

As the day began to fade into night, Arthur set out to collect kindling to build a fire. He stumbled over a rock and then another one. He looked down. A skull stared back at him. A dead man from the Seven Days Battle from two years ago.

Here, at the same spot. Arthur thought he saw Thomas’ face imprinted on the ominous skull, staring back at him with agony etched across his face, but he quickly shook the image from his mind. He finished collecting wood and returned to his tent.

After provoking a flame, Arthur pulled out the leather diary he retrieved from the Virginian plantation. He’d only had it a month, but already it was half full. Or maybe it was half empty. He was never sure how you were supposed to look at those things.

Arthur had taken to detailing everything in his diary. One day he recounted the gruesome surgery of a man whose arm dangled by only four ligaments, the next he sketched a flower.

If it was something or someone near the man, Arthur wrote about it. It took his mind off of the war, even when he wrote

about the battles. The deaths. The horrors. When he put it all down on paper, the terrible things seemed unreal, and the beautiful things seemed to come alive. It was exactly what he needed.

The next morning he was awoken by a courier. Thomas Black was dead. Infection exasperated by the night trek.

“Did he say anything?” Arthur asked the soldier who delivered Thomas’ belongings.

“He said he was happy all the marching was over and the war was done. Some of the fellas told him it wasn’t over yet, but he said he had a feeling ‘this is the end.’ He said, ‘Tell Anabel the children will be alright. Tell my mother I was a proud Union soldier.’ He also asked that you write the letter back.

He wanted a friend to do it,” the soldier reported.

“Was he in pain?”

The soldier looked at the ground. “He’s out of it now,” he acknowledged. “He was brave.”

Arthur nodded, took the parcel of Thomas’ things, and sat down to write the condolence letter. He thought to include how close he had grown to Thomas. How he asked after Anabel and the children, Thomas Jr. and Margaret, every time his friend received a letter. But he couldn’t find the words. Saying all those things then reporting his final moments… Arthur didn’t think it sounded right.

When he picked up the pencil he disclosed Thomas’ military accomplishments, his valor and dignity in the face of the rebels, and his proud stand for justice. He shared the information the soldier disclosed to him, stating that “any pain Thomas experienced at the end of his life was soon vanquished as he entered God’s Kingdom. There is nothing but light where he is now, and he will forever be remembered as a 23

hero to those who knew him.” Arthur addressed the envelope to Thomas’ mother and gave it to a courier, to be sent off at once.

“What’d you write that for?” Cassidy asked. He flicked the red hair away from his eyes. The freckles on his cheeks were ashen. The months of battle had faded the cheery blotches.

After Arthur sent the letter off he didn’t have time to mourn.

The sun was rising. The signs of battle filtered through the air.

Arthur inhaled deeply. He collected his musket and donned his jacket and cap.

“Just in case,” Arthur answered.

He wasn’t prepared for the fight that day, that bloody day of June 2nd. Somehow he survived. He didn’t remember anything he did on the battlefield. It all blended together into some kind of foggy dream, but when the moon rose in the sky, his heart was still beating. Arthur knew he cheated death that day; it was going to come for him tomorrow, he could feel it.

He knew it. He knew it because too many lines of bodies were piled too high along the road. He knew it because the guns rang louder than ever before, reverberating with a HARK HARK HARK. Art Art Art… He knew it and that’s why he couldn’t sleep that night. He knew it and that’s why he wrote it in his diary: June 3.

Cold Harbor. I was killed.

“Art?” Arthur turned to look over his shoulder.

Cassidy Dickinson was standing behind him, peering at the diary in Arthur’s hands.

Cassidy regarded him grimly.

“I can always tear it out,” Arthur assured him.

“In fact, I’d like that,” he chuckled.

…it all blended together into some kind of foggy dream, but when the moon rose in the sky, his heart was still beating.

Cassidy did not smile. “That’s bad luck,” he said. “You don’t want to predict your own death. That can’t be good…”

“Don’t worry on it, Cassidy. It’ll be fine.”

Cassidy sat down on the ground beside Arthur. His hands worked over the body of his musket. He bit at his bottom lip. Arthur reached a hand out and patted the boy on the back.

“It’ll be fi — ” Arthur started, but Cassidy interrupted him.

“I see the fellas… they’re all pinning their names onto their coats.” Cassidy turned to Arthur, a pleading look in his eye. “Why are they doing that?”

Arthur gritted his teeth. Cassidy was only eighteen. He looked even younger. Being scared made him look younger. Arthur didn’t know how to answer him. He didn’t know how to answer him without telling him the truth.

“How about you don’t think about that?” Arthur suggested.

“We’ve just got to think about the good things, right?”

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Cassidy gestured to Arthur’s diary. “You’re not thinking about good things,” he pointed out.

the man. Arthur looked to his left and right. All the men had their names tacked on their coats. He shook his head.

Arthur closed the leather book in his hands. He set it aside. “Pumpkin pie. You said your mother made a delicious pumpkin pie. Tell me more about it.”

“No, thank you,” he replied stiffly. He felt his heart against the leather book in his shirt. He already had his name. He already had his story, as short as it was.

Cassidy shrugged his shoulders. Quietly, he began talking about his mother’s pie. His voice never raised above a whisper.

Arthur couldn’t even hear what the boy was saying, but he nodded his head as if he could. A tear fell from Cassidy’s cheek. Arthur went to pat his back again, but the redhead stood up, mumbled something, and walked off.

“If you make it out,” George said, “Will you tell my father how I died? On the front lines, running towards the Rebs before even the sun could be bothered to wake up.”

Arthur’s palms began to sweat. The sun was not out yet, so it was not the heat that did the job; he was sweating for another reason. He knew the order was coming. The Union Corps were to move out at 4:30 a.m. A thick fog encircled him. For a moment he thought perhaps he was still asleep, but the dread sat so heavily in the pit of his stomach that he knew it was real.

Apparently an order was made. Arthur didn’t hear it, but he felt George and the man on his left moving forward. He felt a gun hit his back as a soldier behind him stepped forward.

Arthur’s feet shuffled through the fog. He could see, but suddenly he could not hear. He could feel, but suddenly all he could feel was cold. His musket shook in his hands. This was not how he was supposed to die. This was not how a soldier was supposed to die. Toughen up, he told himself. Prepare yourself. You’ve known all night long this would happen, so accept it. This is real. And it was real. It was the most real feeling Arthur ever experienced going in to battle because he knew, actually knew, not just recognized the possibility, that this was his death.

He heard shuffling in the tents around him. It was time.

Arthur picked his diary back up and flipped to the front page.

“Arthur Addison Rodway” was written on the center of the page. Arthur picked up his pencil and added “Union Solider” below his name. He looked at it a moment before deciding to add “Proud” in front of the second inscription. He closed the diary and stuck it in his shirt beside his heart. He put the pencil in a pocket of his coat. Just in case, he half-laughed to himself.

Arthur found his corp. He lined up with the men. He stood in the front line.

“Of course,” Arthur promised. He could ask no such promise of George.

A string of fire went off somewhere in front of the Union line.

Sparks shot into the air. Arthur’s eyes widened. The sound came back all at once. BANG. June 3. Cold Harbor. I was killed.

“Art,” a brown-haired soldier named George said, “Do you want a scrap of paper?” George offered a pencil and paper to 25

Prejudice

by Molly Yates

Spiral bound recovery of a soldier, a witness on her final battle before the blood spills free and forgets,

the war has not been won.

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The Olive Down South

by Nathan Collier

It is July 17, 1864. General Joseph E. Johnston of the Confederacy has just been relieved of command. His replacement, the reckless and ill respected John Bell Hood, is preparing to throw charge after bloody charge at the Union lines surrounding Atlanta. The reader assumes the role of fictional aide-de-camp Franklin Withrow, an Atlanta native walking by Johnston’s side as he leaves the large home he was staying in. In his hands Johnston holds the telegram from Jefferson Davis relieving him of command. The former general, now disgraced, has asked for you.

Walk with me.

Take it in, Franklin, every layered bit of Atlanta: the trees, the streets, the people. Let’s stand here like two painters, keen to gaze at their subject as long as time will allow because they know their subject is doomed and won’t be here very much longer. This is your city, and I’m heavy for it.

I’m sorry, you must understand, this paper, this damned script, it affords me one and only one advantage. Gone is the burden of leadership, and in its place the freedom to speak honestly. And once, this once, I intend to do that.

I carry an overture weight for this place in my heart. I have now fallen, and this place will soon share the same fate as me. We’re brothers in that way, this town and I. For like it, I shot up from the ground and seemed to carry an unstoppable growth, my career. And now, together, we stand at the abysmal edge of our erasure from this earth.

You are by no means expected to stay and suffer this rambling of mine. I am now, only just now, beginning to process what is happening. It helps me to do that aloud, and if you’re willing to be my audience, I’ll go from here with a slightly more measured peace.

You’ll stay and listen? Good.

I can see the question on your face, you feel it creeping over you and you’re finding quickly, you may have the courage to ask it. And since I’m now only a civilian, you may of course, ask your question with no fear of repercussion.

You can’t even find the words, can you? They won’t enter your mouth, and I respect that. And you have my training and your own courage and discipline to thank. So I’ll say the question aloud for you. This piece of horrid paper will let me say exactly what you cannot.

Should you stay? That’s what you want to ask. Should you, beyond all hope and all mindful intelligence, remain at your post and see this wretched task through? And will I nurse the astounding delusion that you have a flight’s chance of success?

I’ll answer all your questions, and the cost of my answer is your ear for the next few moments. It is well? It is well. Good.

There, look behind the magnolia tree. Do you see the moon appearing out to us? It will come turning through the branches in a moment and change our faces to ghost white.

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Then you’ll smell the honeysuckle, as if the moonbeams themselves carry the odor. It’s not a creature of your mind, Franklin. The beauty of this place is so real it’s almost spiritual. And do you want to know something else? The fires and screams that will encompass this road, this very road, will also be in their own sanguine way, beautiful, not in themselves of course, but because they carry the next inevitable step for this place.

It’s the place. Nothing can exist on this small part of the earth and not be made more beautiful by being here. Though the fires and war are wretched, I have come to the peace that it’s not the end of this city. How can it be? The people and the place are linked in their ability to rise above whatever sickness sits on them. Be it war, or the tides of change they resist.

Let’s walk a bit and take in the sight of the men. I’ll be just on the edge of bearing it, but I need to make myself see. One last time. Not too close, Franklin, let’s wander back a bit, walk the street here behind where they muster. The news of my replacement is secret for now — in other words this is an army camp and everyone knows. Standing here, a ways back, will let me admire them one last time without their looks of pity and bewilderment.

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freedom from rank makes it possible. This rambling Texan will throw waves of men and barely make a dent. These soldiers aren’t his sons, not like they’re my sons. I have toiled to keep them alive, not squander them like dashes of water upon a house fire none of us can extinguish. He is a Rebel but no Georgian, and no Sherman equal. He is one of the many slobbering opportunists of this great war, and an opportunist is often a poor leader and a poor judge of the value of men’s lives. For soon, he’ll believe his best opportunity lies in spending those lives, and he couldn’t be more misguided.

That’s all I shall say on the matter of the one replacing me. It was a moment of weak-statured pride creeping in to rob me of the last vestige of honor I now cling to. You may find my contempt unreasonable and so temper your lofty opinion of my person, and we wouldn’t want that now would we? Let’s turn away from thoughts of him. I need to consider the city.

I hold a somewhat naïve conception of myself as a man of the world. Not because I’ve seen it, but because I know men who’ve seen it, and I make an effort to listen to all of them.

I’m also well-read, and any inhabited place worth mentioning, I know at least a few story bits about that place.

There they are, the soldiers in the heart of the city, distant from the front. They walk, and chatter around their stations.

They fix bayonets, cook, send up their prayers floating like the embers that lift from their fires. Some of them patron the women with pies or flour. Their talks are of the days to come, just as everyone here talks. But can you see up ahead, where the city ends? Look there down the hill, the lean-tos and the ramparts of the front. There lay the pits where men confront the rabid destiny our two sides have arrived at.

I say this, because you need to understand the rarity of this city and its soul. Boys like you, Franklin, Atlantan born through and through, are keen to burst through the Georgia line and explore the wide places and vast summits. That was their sense before the war, anyway. I can tell you, coming back is nearly a rite of passage. To realize you’ve seen the world and have no interest in any other dirt than the dirt you ran in as a child. Not every place offers this kind of requited satisfaction. To hold in you the peace that you’ve always been exactly where you want to be.

Those men are thousands of sons. All of them precious. I’ll speak negatively of my replacement only once, because the

It’s a pleasure rare. But now we see our great city suffer. The men have gone without coffee for how long now? I see from

your face you know the answer far better than I! Well it may surprise you, I too have gone without. Just as Alexander poured out his water before his men, so I bear my men’s nails and hammers with them. I am them and they are me, just as Atlanta is me and I am her. And we both will rise again.

Here, across the street, we see the last few merchants locking their doors. Their only patrons have been the soldiers for many days now, and the only purchases the soldiers are making are for whatever food they can buy. That woman there, she wears a much simpler dress than she did a few weeks ago. Her name is Rose and she wore dresses that would shame even the brightest peacock. Now, in a village frock she toils with no husband. The boots she wears are heavy and unbecoming of her dainty appearance. They’re her son’s work boots. Her slippers that match the dress have been sold. She’s gone from royalty level wealth to scraps over the past year, and unlike those born poor, she hasn’t the slightest clue how to live within narrow means. Those jars she carries, olives, she sells to the men.

panicked running, men and woman making split-second decisions about what mattered enough to run away with, and what can be left.

The legions Titus commanded spilled into the city and did their duty to their empire. Titus would reap such large mountains of praise from the event that he’d become Emperor. He left the city spent and broken, marching away with minimal casualties.

But then something happened.

Our Atlanta, perched to fail as she is now, will take on the glorious spectacle of the phoenix in years to come.

Olives, of course.

The truth of our fair city lies in a story I once heard about olives.

I’ll give you a history lesson, Franklin, and answer that long wondered question of yours, all at once. Your time spent as my listening ear will be fruitful indeed!

When the Roman general Titus surrounded the city of Jerusalem, he cut down every single olive tree around the city.

His men needed clear lines of sight and he needed to suck the economy of the place dry, so no olive trees. And the terrible destruction of the great city began. There was fire, there were

The olive trees, one by one, grew back. Some claim they line Jerusalem this very day, making olives sweeter and larger than they ever had before. Those trees encompass the city’s beauty, history, economy, safety, and indeed, personality. They are tied to Jerusalem a hundred times more strongly than cotton or tobacco is tied to us.

And they grew back.

Our Atlanta, perched to fail as she is now, will take on the glorious spectacle of the phoenix in years to come. She will rise, better and even more enticing than this present version.

She will beckon to all, and many lofty people will have her to thank for their gifts. And it may very well be the case that 31

this present toil isn’t the only pain she will suffer. There may be more and there may be worse calamities than this.

Let’s watch our onetime socialite again, shall we? She heads home now, to a very old plantation house that is currently shared by a dozen women all whose husbands are gone. Her possessions have dwindled down to nothing except what fits in her arms. She cannot see the blessing in disguise this is, but I can. Our nemesis will command the city’s evacuation when he inevitably arrives. I know this because I’ve learned him. When his order comes down, our maiden in the village frock will have no mountain of wealth to fret over. She’ll be free to achieve safety without the burden of stress provided by unmovable wealth.

I can tell from your face you discern the lesson. The slow pain she’s gone through has made her a woman more capable.

She’s prepared in ways her previous self wasn’t.

That kind of transition is what may be necessary for our city.

The long remembered lesson that comes from pain, and leads us to greater heights, that is our fate. Her story is Atlanta just like the olives of Jerusalem and like my position in the army.

That is why, Franklin, I must answer your question by imploring you to stay. Not because of my duty as a former officer, but for the hope of the city’s future. Atlanta is now a character in this play. Just as Lincoln is a character or Stonewall Jackson is a character. It will be up to those left behind to write the next chapter of Atlanta, and we should take care to ensure its people worthy of the writing.

But I can smell your hesitation. You don’t dare believe the story of resurrection I tell about this place, and how can you be expected to? You have only your senses, and they implore on you two things; that destruction is imminent and it will be permanent. The former is most true, the latter is most not.

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I believe this because as a General I had to think ahead, not days and weeks ahead but months and years ahead. I had to take the campaign of my men and our endeavors and play it out far in advance. I apply that same sensibility to this city, and I see the olive shoot coming out from the ashes. Atlanta cannot stand simple survival; she is to thrive, or become nothing.

And now here we stand, in a funny place. I’m next to the carriage that will exit me to my family in Carolina, and at the same time imploring you to stay! Will I show them this paper in my hand? Will I let them read it? They’ll know the story either way, won’t they? Well then, will I keep it to remind myself of humility? It seemed to burn like ice when I first held it, but that feeling has washed away a bit.

Remain then not for my relief of command; you’re not endeared to him. Remain for the city herself, because you believe the newer version that comes from her will be something worth every sacrifice.

I do believe, that should God and fate allow, I’ll see the new Atlanta or at least part of her, in my lifetime.

Help me step into the carriage.

She is yours now to defend. If you survive it all, assist in her evolution, for people will be speaking her name long after you and I are gone.

Wait, driver.

Here, Franklin, the money in my pocket, let me give it to you.

It feels right and good to leave the city truly empty handed, so take it. If you find Rose, buy some olives and keep them until you’re old. May you look at them and remember my story.

Battle of Palmetto Ranch

by Jenna Hanes

A great house, now half-standing, perched its ruined walls and sunken roof upon the hill.

Magpies, like shrunken blackened bandits encircled clouds above the gore; they ate their fill.

With raucous calls, the scavengers held court, echoing above the remnants of the fray, and wives clutched letters to their crippled hearts; they felt the wounds from a hundred miles away.

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REALITY + PERCEPTION The end of the Civil War was only the beginning of the fight for racial equality. Case in point: the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which prohibited racial discrimination in voting, was not passed until 100 years after the abolition of slavery. This section looks at how the disparity between perceived freedom and actual freedom affects people, and how this gap can only be closed when people are willing to stand on the principle of love.

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The Many Battles of Atlanta 150 Years After the Fight, Our Struggles Continue.

by Fletcher Moore

One-hundred-fifty years ago next month, some 25,000 ill-fed, ill-dressed men issued from wood and earth fortifications around the perimeter of what is now downtown Atlanta.

Their aim was to sneak around the edge of a sizable Federal army and slay them all from behind. The effort entailed a 15-mile march through the dark of night, in the smothering July heat, down dusty paths and through a trackless wilderness.

There’s not a whole lot I can say about these people and their quixotic mission that hasn’t been said at absurd lengths by a battalion of better writers and better researchers than I. However, I bike past the remnants of those fortifications on my way to work every day. My house is just a mile from no-man’s land.

Modern Atlanta sits atop a thick loam of history, but sometimes you can’t tell without a bit of digging. Historical markers are a blur glimpsed from the windows of cars. The terrain has been razed and raised until it bears no relation to the hills and valleys over which armies fought. There are but four antebellum houses still in the city, and one of them was carted across town some 40 years ago. The symbol of Atlanta is the phoenix, rising from its own ashes, but perhaps it ought to be the ostrich, burying its head against recognition of its own past.

For years I’ve read about that march and spotted the markers fleetingly from car windows. As July loomed, I began to think, “Gee, I’ve got a good pair of boots. I ate a double-cheeseburger for dinner last night — there’s no reason I couldn’t make that march myself.”

So on July 21, 2012, the 148th anniversary of the Confederate march that inaugurated the Battle of Atlanta, I did just that.

Hiking in the ATL Hiking is something people usually do in the woods. I enjoy hiking the wilderness of our great nation as much as anyone, I suppose, but there’s an appeal to urban hiking I think is systematically overlooked. It’s been said that the Civil War was transformative for the United States not least because it was an opportunity for millions of people — soldiers, mainly — to traipse across it and to get a first-hand idea of what it was they collectively possessed. It’s for the same reason I believe everyone should take long walks through American cities.

There’s a big difference between viewing a city from a bucket seat and experiencing it on foot. In a car, the landscape spools past like a film, accompanied only by the sound of whatever 39

music happens to be bubbling from the stereo, the atmosphere attenuated to its nadir by air conditioning. It’s fast, one-dimensional, and — barring a fiery accident — quickly forgotten.

On foot, by contrast, the world inhabits not only the eye, but also the ear and not seldom the nose. It touches the skin and even the tongue, and it does all this at a stately pace.

The horizon manifests its mysteries with exquisite leisure, charging the initiate in both time and sweat for the pleasure.

Objects rise up, pass, and linger in the distance, giving you plenty of time to observe, to digest, to think. The road trip may be the modern rite of passage, but as is usually the case with technology, for all we gained, something was lost — richness of experience, in this case. Which, after all, is the stuff of life.

With this notion in mind, I packed a bag — a bottle of water, my phone and an external battery to keep it charged, a pair of binoculars, an expensive (borrowed) camera, and a giant hunting knife with which I imagined I would defend the camera if I wound up running afoul of hoodlums. I stepped out of the front door of my house at 12:30 p.m. on Saturday, July 21, with a light heart and a matching step, determined to share some of the experience of that particular group of soldiers on a similar day 148 years prior.

The March For those who are not regular subscribers to Military History Quarterly, a bird’s-eye view of the event is in order.

Throughout the summer of 1864, Federal Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman had relentlessly driven his Confederate foes under Gen. Joseph E. Johnston southeast from Chatta40

nooga to Atlanta, roughly along the route of the modern I-75.

Johnston was a wily defender, but Sherman was tenacious, forcing Johnston to retreat time and again, finally reaching Atlanta in early July. The Confederate government took a dim view of this turn of events, and plucked Johnston from his command on the eve of the Battle of Peachtree Creek, replacing him with his very aggressive — some would say rash — subordinate, Gen. John Bell Hood. As he had done in each of the previous battles of the campaign, Sherman sought to circumvent, or “flank,” the Rebel defenses, sending half his army, under Gen. James “Birdseye” McPherson, southeast toward Decatur.

After a failed attack on the Federals as they crossed Peachtree Creek north of Atlanta, Hood drew his troops into the city’s inner defensive lines, in the hopes of getting Sherman to stick his neck out. Sherman arguably did just that, sending McPherson due west from the Decatur area along a route roughly corresponding to I-20. At nightfall on July 21, McPherson’s 35,000 men were arrayed in a north-south line, from somewhere near the intersection of I-20 and Moreland Avenue to the vicinity of Little Five Points, with a reserve division (around 12,000 men) encamped in modern Candler Park.

Seeing his opportunity, Hood ordered one of his corps commanders, Gen. William J. Hardee, to march his men along a hook-shaped route, south, then east, then back north, seeking to fall undetected upon the left flank and rear of McPherson’s army. The march was to be performed under cover of night, aiming to recreate Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson’s similar maneuver at Chancellorsville the year before, which had produced a stunning victory. Audacious as Hood’s idea may have been, however, Hardee’s march was beset with unexpected obstacles, and the troops were not in a position to attack until past noon the following day, by which time McPherson had sniffed out the plan and sent his reserve to

meet them. While the Confederates enjoyed some initial success, the offensive ultimately failed, and subsequently the Confederate position in Atlanta began to slowly unravel, culminating in a fiery retreat some six weeks later.

It was Hardee’s route I aimed to duplicate.

An Army Marches on its Belly Less than two blocks from my house I was waylaid by a thicket of blackberries.

I can’t resist wild blackberries, so I paused to pick as many as I could carry. As I walked along, shoveling blackberries into my gullet, a fact began to dawn on me: moving 25,000 people through the Georgia countryside was probably a damned difficult thing to do. It’s a good bet the soldiers of Hardee’s corps hadn’t had a bowl of Kraft macaroni and a roast beef sandwich for lunch. Assuming they had anything at all (not a lock), it was likely hardtack, which is like crackers except harder, like wood. Or parched corn, which has strangely survived into the present day as Corn Nuts, available at most gas stations throughout the land. I like Corn Nuts, but they don’t constitute a meal by any standard.

So they were likely hungry. And thirsty — I made my way through half of a 32-ounce bottle of water before I had gone a mile. Moreover, among any group of 25,000 folks, a significant number at any given moment will have to visit the loo. More than a few will stop to shake a stone out of a boot. Or adjust their gear. Or just sit on a rock until yelled at.

In short, the column was doubtless disposed to spontaneous dissolution into the woods on either side of the road, and thus the mystery of why it took them so long to cover 15 miles is partly solved.

I ate my berries in solemn silence, thinking how much easier logistics are when you have a credit card.

In 1864, Atlanta was wrapped in concentric rings of fortifications — trenches and breastworks, these latter being essentially mounds of dirt thrown up in front of the former, perhaps with wooden palisades atop them, anchored by earthen forts, or “redoubts,” and fronted with “chevaux de frise” — lines of sharpened logs arrayed at angles like crossed swords. The logs provided a formidable barrier to any troops that might make it within spitting distance of the trenches or redoubts.

Not that this was likely; the land for several hundred yards before the fortifications was stripped bare of vegetation to provide killing fields to defenders — several football fields worth of ground any attacker would have to cover with no defense but his own speed and luck.

It was from one or more of these fortifications that Hardee’s corps emerged on the evening of July 21. The consensus is that they took what is now Capital Avenue southward, past Turner Field and on down Hank Aaron Way. I opted to start my journey proper at Grant Park, somewhat to the east of their presumed departure route. Here can be found the only remaining fragments of the fortifications: the remains of a redoubt called Fort Walker, named for Maj. Gen. W.H.T. Walker, one of Hardee’s divisional commanders, doomed to die early in the next day’s battle while he inspected the land before the Confederate lines. The remains of the fort require some exercise of imagination — they amount to little more than a semi-circular mound of dirt covered in wood chips. In the middle of the circle is a playground, empty and forlorn; this part of the park is partly isolated from the rest by Zoo Atlanta and its parking lot. I threw myself down on the wood chips and took a few pictures, seeking the view through the sights of an imaginary musket.

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From here I walked down Atlanta Avenue westward toward Turner Field. This seemed reasonable to me — out of 25,000 soldiers, there had to be a few stationed at or near Fort Walker. I was one of these unlucky fellows, compelled to walk an extra half-mile or so.

Descent (Basso Loco) The walk from Fort Walker to Turner Field is a microcosm of some of the problems facing Atlanta. Grant Park is an increasingly affluent, gentrified neighborhood. Moving west you pass through an invisible race barrier, from white to black, and slowly through an economic barrier as well, from comfortable to struggling. By the time I reached Hank Aaron Way, I had begun to feel distinctly alien and extremely self-conscious.

Like many liberal white Atlantans, I like to think I don’t carry any racist baggage, and indeed, among wealthy and middle-class blacks, I find myself much more well-adjusted than I ever did living in places with higher percentages of whites. Like, say, rural Michigan.

conversing in front of a dingy convenience store — it’s a lizard-brain reaction, and doubtless a deeply unfair one. It was me, after all, that had come into their neighborhood. It’s not as though they were lurking there in hopes that a lone white guy with a pricey camera would come loping past.

It’s a joy to live in the heart of the Civil Rights Movement.

I cast my votes for John Lewis with great enthusiasm and I view the MLK Center with great reverence. But that irrational tic is still there nearly eight generations after the Civil War. It’s enough to inspire a deep pessimism, given that there are so many in these parts that seem happily willing to be governed by their passions rather than their reason.

On this gloomy note I turned south, and for a mile or so the caliber of the neighborhood continued to plunge. At first it was mostly residential: tattered cinder block houses inter-

Moving west you pass through an invisible race barrier, from white to black, and slowly through an economic barrier as well, from comfortable to struggling.

But the discomfort that rises like magma when entering a poor black neighborhood is hard to tamp down. I viewed with deep suspicion a group of half a dozen young black men 42

spersed with the occasional dilapidated market tattooed liberally with “EBT accepted here” signs. There were a handful of churches and mosques, usually in old buildings that still bore the characteristic shapes of the businesses that once inhabited them — fast-food restaurants and banks mostly. There were no functional chain operations of any sort.

The few businesses that remained were loners and very much on life support.

As I approached McDonough Boulevard, the character of my surroundings began to take on a decidedly more industrial flavor. McDonough is intertwined with a railroad, and a couple trucking concerns have colonized the intersection between it and Hank Aaron Way, presumably taking loads from the train and sending them across town. There was a cardboard recycling facility as well. These might be bustling on a weekday, but on this day they were as dead and empty as cicada husks.

Incongruously, across the street from the recycling plant was the very posh Carver High School. Carver is no joke. It offers a performing arts program, an early college program that includes some classes at Georgia State University, and a sort of pre-pre-med program. This is in sharp contrast to my own high school, which primarily offered an opportunity for kids to show off their cars in the parking lot. Still I’m surprised at the oddball location of this magnificent school with its lush and lovely campus. Catering to the disadvantaged I can understand, but its placement in the midst of an industrial slum imparts the sense of a besieged castle. It’s hard to fathom how the students must feel here — whether they look inside at the plenty they’ve been given, or whether they look outward at the ruin that surrounds them.

Imprisonment Defunct businesses have a sort of patron saint on McDonough Boulevard — a vast, decaying distribution center that looks to have been extinct for several years. The grounds comprise something in the neighborhood of 20 acres — a sprawling field of broken concrete with weeds sprout-

ing through every available crack and hulking enigmas of yellow-painted steel equipment scattered like dinosaur bones in an ancient riverbed. The main building is the size of two Super Walmarts plugged together, and is tattooed with graffiti tags the size of freeway billboards. A sign indicates the facility’s availability to any who might see in its ghostly wreck some vision of an industrious future. I can’t imagine many do. And like a punchline, the derelict facility is immediately followed by the grounds of the federal prison.

The United States Penitentiary on McDonough possesses at once an austere beauty and a cold menace. Built in 1902 on a design by the architectural firm Eames and Young, which also produced the design for Leavenworth Penitentiary and many other historic buildings of a less penal nature, the main building is essentially a perfectly squared block of stone the size of an aircraft carrier. It’s built out of blocks of granite brought in from a local quarry, which create strong horizontal lines like children’s writing paper. The walls are pierced in a regimented fashion with tall rectangular windows, producing a look reminiscent of marching columns. At each corner of the building is a square tower with a smallish onion dome.

Top center is a copper cupola.

For all the suggestions of prison bars inherent in the structure, it’s not until you take a closer look that it really begins to take on a more sinister character. Every surface upon which a would-be escapee might climb is lined with coils of razor wire. The tall windows turn out to be fakes — they are really just rectangular depressions in the building’s face. Within their back surfaces, there are small horizontal windows cut, but these are covered with steel bars. Extending from the back corners of the building is a concrete wall, 38 feet high and four feet thick. This wall runs in a T-shaped circuit four-fifths of a mile long, punctuated at each corner with tall watchtowers that look like something intended for air-traffic 43

control. I tried to spot guards in these towers, but they were invisible behind the bluish glass.

The Ninth Circle

The prison has hosted a good share of famous prisoners: mobsters such as Al Capone, John Gotti, New England crime boss Whitey Bulger, and Jimmy Burke — the inspiration for Jimmy Conway in Goodfellas; Frank Abagnale, who was immortalized in the film Catch Me If You Can; perennial Socialist candidate for president Eugene V. Debs; Carlo Ponzi and his criminal disciple Bernard Madoff; and no fewer than two former Major League Baseball players, including Denny McLain — the last pitcher to win 30 games in a season. It was also the site of the longest prison takeover in American history, when a group of Cuban refugees being held there rioted for 11 days in 1987.

The next stretch of the hike, from the prison to Moreland Avenue, was the worst in terms of poverty and desolation. I had slowly come to grips with the looming sense of danger, though I had my moments. At one point I was walking past a small cluster of dingy apartments when a guy on a cell phone fell in behind me. I could hear him talking away loudly and coarsely about a woman. He was totally engrossed, but I still didn’t like having him behind me. Presently, we passed a stretch of road bordered on one side by nothing short of a bona fide forest — oaks and maples with a thick undergrowth of kudzu — and on the other side by an empty field of high grass, across which at a distance of maybe a mile could be seen a few shabby houses huddled together like cowering animals. On either side was the vegetation less than four feet high, and yet behind the curtain of grass my cell-chatting shadow abruptly vanished.

I stopped out front and took a good number of photos, fully expecting an armed guard to walk over and start questioning me at any moment. The guard failed to materialize, but the rain did, so I trekked across the street to a Chevron, the first business I’d seen for almost two hours that didn’t appear to be on the verge of bankruptcy. There was a small Mexican grocery across the street doing a fairly brisk business, alongside a Mrs. Winner’s Chicken and Biscuits that was decidedly not. In the Chevron I pulled 40 bucks out of the ATM and purchased a Coke and the only object I could find that resembled actual food: a “Firecracker,” described on the display box as “The Official Red Hot Pickled Sausage.” It tasted like a condom stuffed with soil and Sriracha, but it felt proper to eat something official while standing near a penitentiary.

The rain passed quickly, and I hit the road again right away.

There’s a reason a guy has to hike across a field full of burrs and ticks to get where he’s going: His government has failed him. The city of Atlanta has a responsibility to provide infrastructure — roads, bridges, sidewalks, electrical, and water service — to its citizens. But unfortunately, in this, the nation’s seventh emptiest city, the money is not sufficient to serve a population occupying as much territory as we do, even if it is spent well, which is often not the case. It’s like too little icing spread over too much cake. The obvious solution is to reduce the size of the cake, but there’s no easy way to do that — simply put, those on the margins are priced out of the core. And so they remain on the margins and make their own infrastructure: footpaths through the wilderness.

It almost goes without saying that the people who live in these places are at a tremendous economic disadvantage.

There’s a recent coinage, “food desert,” that wonderfully

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describes areas without ready access to decent food. But places like these are deserts of all sorts of things — transportation, culture, jobs, beauty, joy. It must be awfully hard to grow up surrounded by rotting houses and empty storefronts.

At one point I saw a group of 5- to 7-year-olds playing in the yard of a dingy cluster of apartments while blaring rap music intoned to them, “that pussy, that pussy, that pussy.” Grotesque, to be sure, but is it any worse to be a child in a world where the most effusive demonstration of government money and power — indeed perhaps the only evidence of government’s existence at all — is the sprawling prison next door?

Interlude After passing the last and gloomiest of the grim little apartment complexes that dot McDonough Boulevard, I passed into a sort of silent, empty purgatory. The land opened up somewhat — less of the wild vegetation that defined most of the previous stretch, and fewer buildings as well, of either a decrepit or robust character. The change was signaled by the appearance of two historical markers in quick succession.

The first detailed Hood’s evacuation of Atlanta on Sept. 1, 1864 — the route taken in this event was, ironically, the same as that taken by Hardee on the night of July 21. The second marker was a reminder that I was, in fact, still on the scent of Hardee’s march. I found it covered with graffiti.

Reaching Moreland Avenue, I turned south. Hardee’s route at this point is fuzzy — Moreland didn’t exist at the time.

Whatever the specifics, it was something of a relief for me after the desolation of McDonough Boulevard, to arrive in a region exhibiting at least a modicum of economic activity.

And though it can hardly be called thriving, the area does sport one of Atlanta’s treasures — The Starlight Drive-In.

This 65-year-old paean to the art of tailgating survives, no doubt, due to the supreme undesirability of the surrounding land. Sometimes a poor location is a good location.

The rest of the journey down Moreland was unremarkable, save for traffic density, which was the highest I was to see all day, and a tiny notebook I spotted on the sidewalk. I picked it up and rifled through it as I walked. It was a diary, presumably written by someone living nearby, full of depressing stuff like this: Goals Find a new home for my family.

Help De get her a new car.

Get me a new car.

These goals I have set for now. Stay Focus is my motto.

Stay focus. It’s a good motto, isn’t it?

The Wilderness At length I arrived at Fayetteville Road. It was at this juncture that Hardee judged he had gone far enough south to be certain his movement would be masked from the Federals.

His men, and I, turned to the northeast.

The change wrought by this turn manifested at once. Suddenly I was no longer in Atlanta, the 11th largest metropolitan area in the United States. I had entered a wilderness.

There were no more sidewalks. The road was lined with neckhigh grass and brambles, followed hard on by thick woods.

I was out of water (and Coke) and had seen no place along Moreland at which to refill, but I wouldn’t have guessed this 45

wilderness would extend as long as it would turn out to. Poor judgment, that.

Fayetteville Road was not without residents, but their houses were scattered at a fairly good remove from one another. At the least they did evince some signs of vitality — mostly in the form of heaps of plastic toys, or pieces thereof, strewn willy-nilly in backyards amidst the carapaces of cars perched gingerly on concrete blocks. I crossed a lonesome railroad track and shortly thereafter passed some sort of small warehouse still in operation but very much in danger of being swallowed by the vegetation, as was the police training academy a few hundred yards past that. The frequency of houses declined and finally all signs of present civilization passed away like a scrap of newspaper in the wind, leaving me in an empty and silent landscape. Yet every now and then a break in the trees would provide an incongruous view of the skyscrapers of downtown Atlanta just a few miles distant and yet as far economically and psychologically as if they had been across an ocean.

After a time with no sights but the trees and grass and no sounds but the buzzing of cicadas, I spotted a pair of kids walking toward me with a camera tripod. A guy and a girl.

I wondered how they would react to my appearance in this desolate wasteland. I didn’t have to wait long — they hailed me at some distance to ask if I was taking photographs. Yes, I said, and explained my journey. The girl told me that I was almost on top of the old state prison farm. They indicated a break in the brush up ahead, where I might cut through onto a path that led to the prison buildings. Now, you may think me a fool, what with my parched throat and empty bottle, but this was something I couldn’t resist.

The state prison farm is a boon to the sort of people that keep spelunking gear around for the purpose of exploring rotting buildings. For the rest of Atlanta, not so much. It opened 46

in the early 1900s and closed around the early to mid-1990s, and during its life it collected a checkered reputation as a dumping ground for “undesirable” populations — blacks early on and the homeless later. Since its closure, it’s been left simply to decay — an object of contention between the city that owns it, Atlanta, and the county that houses it, DeKalb.

It would make an excellent city park, but instead, for almost two decades it has served as an illicit playground for fringe types — drug users, homeless people, graffiti artists, and the occasional tourist of rot such as myself.

I walked along the quiet curving road that led through the trees, unsure what to expect. A building emerged. White concrete, blanketed in kudzu, with a steel staircase on the near end. I approached it, crossing a smallish asphalt lot with a basketball hoop on one side. I climbed the rickety stairs and peered down a long, trash-filled hallway pierced on either side with open doorways. One of these was close at hand and fairly beckoned to me, so I walked a few feet down the hallway and peered in.

I was presented with a view of a long concrete room which I assume was once a dormitory. In a manner of speaking, it still was. The floor was covered with detritus indicative of countless camps: the remains of a fire surrounded by flattened cardboard boxes and filthy sheets and blankets, empty food cans, booze bottles, newspapers. Glancing to my right I saw a metal frame which may once have been bunk beds. Someone had hung a profusion of rubber chickens and doll heads from it. And then, looking back to the camp area, something shiny caught my eye — an enormous meat cleaver.

Too weird for me. A few feverish minutes later I was back on the road with Hardee again, hauling my cannons up Key Road in the ever growing heat of the afternoon.

Thirst Back on the road, I rounded a curve and came to two more historical markers. These were the first I had seen in quite some time (the one located at the corner of Moreland and Fayetteville appears to have vanished some years ago). They detailed Hardee’s pre-dawn arrival at the now long gone Cobb’s Mill. Here he procured guides for an upcoming wilderness march, or at least, so read the marker. I am unable to find any indication that either Key Road or Bouldercrest didn’t exist in 1864, but I suppose it’s reasonable to assume that either or both may have been little more than goat tracks and possibly unreliable or laced with frequent off-ramps. At any rate, it is clear that confusion was beginning to set in for Hardee, and it’s understandable why. Even with my fancy iPhone in hand I had difficulty judging the distance to the next convenience store, whereas Hardee and his men lacked not only the convenience store and the iPhone, but also the promise of a ride home once they reached East Atlanta. The greater likelihood for them were permanent resting spots in Oakland Cemetery.

It had been a good hour since I’d last had a drop of liquid, and the cool weather of the early afternoon had given way to a smothering blanket of unbreathable air more or less at the same moment the path began a grueling climb to Bouldercrest Road, still over half a mile distant. I was parched. Perhaps dangerously so.

To my great shock, the next feature I passed turned out to be a water treatment plant.

My natural assumption was that there was no better place in Atlanta to procure a glass of water. As I approached the somewhat intimidating guardhouse, though, I received a rude awakening. One of the guards popped out of the door and

asked me to explain myself even though I was still 50 feet distant. “Can I get some water?” I shouted. Her reply was as terse as it was negative, and I wondered, were I to simply drop dead in front of her, would my body find its way back to my family, or would it slowly make its way, molecule by molecule, into the water of nearby Intrenchment Creek, to be filtered out in this very treatment plant and subsequently be sprinkled in powder form on the farms of South Georgia?

So onward I trudged. I went perhaps 200 yards, and for the first time in the day the wilderness at the side of the road was actually inviting. A large field of clover lay to my left, so into it I went. I gratefully flung my gear and myself to the soft, cool ground.

There I remained for 10 minutes, watching the cars zoom past on their way to purchase jugs of iced tea and bags of candy bars. I was in a bind. I knew I was overheating, and I knew that to go on would probably mean heat exhaustion, with its attendant vomiting and headaches. Perhaps heat stroke would follow, with its attendant coma and death.

Still, I couldn’t bring myself to call the rest of the trek off.

At that moment, a big white Cutlass Ciera passed, slowed to a stop, and began to back up. My mind immediately turned to developing cutting remarks in the event, greatly anticipated, that the driver was simply looking for an opportunity to exercise his anti-pedestrian wit.

But the Ciera proved to be the chariot of an angel. The driver, a plump black woman in her late 40s, leaned out the window and shouted, with concern visibly etched on her face, the words I least expected, “Do you want some water?”

I sprang to my feet like I’d been shot out of a toaster and skipped toward the car.

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“You have water?” My voice fairly trembled.

“Well, I don’t have water, but I have Gatorade.”

She handed me a 20-ounce bottle, painfully cold. I told her my mission — she nodded, somewhat blankly but with an amiable smile — and she told me that she and her husband were building a house near the Starlight. She was on her way to pick up supplies of some sort and just happened to be carrying a cooler full of Gatorade. What are the chances?

“Can I take your photo?” I asked. She assented, and I ran back to my piled-up gear, trying to keep my giant buck knife well out of view. I suddenly felt embarrassed to even possess it. I took a couple photos and thanked her as profusely as I was able. Then off she went.

I emptied the entire bottle in one long pull.

brick wall and rested for a long while. At this stage I was not only hot and thirsty but bone-tired. My feet felt swollen and my legs ached severely. Getting under way again, I began to feel that every step was a conscious effort.

It’s not as though I’d never walked anything like this distance.

I can only assume that it was a combination of the heat, the dehydration, the hills, and the weight of my pack that was reducing me so savagely. I can’t imagine that Hardee’s men would have been free from the same difficulties, and many others besides. It must have been a weary army indeed that approached the Federal lines in the late morning of July 22, 1864.

The neighborhood was ratcheting upward in terms of affluence, and was denser than any I had passed through since leaving Grant Park. Earlier in the day I might have welcomed this

The old saw is that Atlanta is the city too busy to hate, but when you get out of the car and press your feet against the soil, it becomes hard to shake the feeling that it’s really a city too busy to give a rip.

Last Legs Feeling much refreshed, I shouldered my pack and continued up the hill. Intellectually I knew the Gatorade had had its impact, but the way was steep and long. By the time I emerged onto Bouldercrest Road, I was already casting about in minor desperation for more liquid. I sat down on a short 48

change, but curiously it seemed to drain all my interest, to turn it from an invigorating backcountry adventure into an enervating slog through the all-too-familiar autopia.

Before long I came to a fork. Bouldercrest led northwest toward East Atlanta. Fayetteville led northeast to a point just past I-20 where the interstate curved south. It was here, already hours late and in some disarray, that Hardee made

his final, fatal mistake. Lacking sufficient information about the two roads and his own position, he divided his army, sending generals Clebourne and Maney with their divisions toward East Atlanta, and Walker and Bate to the east, where Walker would shortly meet his doom. The former pair would become tangled up with McPherson’s reserve, which he had wisely sent south from their camp in Candler Park against the possibility of just such a flanking move as this. The other pair, while undeniably testing the mettle of the Union troops, was too diminished and too weary to finish the job. Had the entire corps taken the eastern road, events might have taken a different turn.

Or perhaps not. In retrospect it’s pretty easy to see the fight for Atlanta for what it was — the final throes of a defeated rebellion. The fall of Vicksburg in July of 1863 had already cut the Confederacy in two, and the conclusion of Gettysburg the day before extinguished any reasonable hope of deliverance from external powers. It takes a generous helping of fantasy to see any kind of path to victory for the South after that point.

Cooler heads would not, of course, prevail for a good while longer. The Battle of Atlanta was a loss for the Confederacy, but it wasn’t decisive. Hood held out for six more weeks before fleeing the city. Even then he wasn’t done: His army ultimately made its way to Tuscumbia, Ala., whence he launched a hopeless stab at middle Tennessee, which earned his men graves in Franklin and Nashville but no appreciable strategic improvement for the Confederacy. Sherman, meanwhile, largely ignored Hood, marching onward to the sea in a path some 30 miles wide, making a powerful point: The Confederacy could no more stop him from going where he wished than they could stop the rain.

Meanwhile, in Virginia, Gen. Robert E. Lee was checked again and again by Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, frantically

searching for a way out until he simply had no moves left. The determination of these men to soldier on in the face of futility is often taken as a sign of their fighting spirit. I’m inclined to think it was just a bullheaded refusal to face the failure they had wrought. This may not be a characteristic unique to the South, but there can be no doubt that the South has long walked arm in arm with denial.

And still does.

Coda Historical sources always make reference to Hardee’s 15-mile march, as indeed I have up to this point. The route followed

by Walker and Bate may have been closer to 15 miles, but I can’t see any way to stretch Clebourne and Maney’s march beyond ten. Whatever the explanation for this discrepancy, my hike was about ten miles.

In those 10 miles, I passed through racial barriers that make hay out of integration. I saw vast swaths of land mired in something close to third-world poverty. The old saw is that Atlanta is the city too busy to hate, but when you get out of the car and press your feet against the soil, it becomes hard to shake the feeling that it’s really a city too busy to give a rip.

Well, that might not be entirely fair. Any moderately perceptive resident of the city quickly gets a sense of the anti-Atlanta vibe coming from the rest of the state. Legislative season is more like a cavalry raid than a function of government, with some legislators declaring their eagerness to leave town before they even arrive.

The charitable view of Atlanta might be that it’s a city with a lot of problems, and that its people are doing the best they 49

can to address them. To a Confederate hunkering in the Georgia wilderness like a Japanese soldier on some Pacific atoll in the 1970s, the idea that Atlanta, one of the capitals of the Rebellion, would dare apply a liberal solution to problems of race and class (and more recently, sexual orientation) would have been anathema.

But our modern die-hards aren’t isolated and living off grubs and roots. They are in positions of power, and so Atlanta continues to be besieged.

As I trudge through East Atlanta and drop myself on a bus bench to await my ride home, I can’t help but think of the one detail of the battle that seems to escape the attention of those who identify with the “lost cause”: When Hood finally gave up the ghost and fled the city, it was he who lit the first match that burned Atlanta to the ground.

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True to Our God; True to Our Native Land

by Akbar Imhotep

It’s just a phrase from a well-known Poem/Song/Anthem raised by many voices for more than a century that inspires a post-show conversation.

A colleague asked, “What did he mean by ‘Native Land’?”

The question generates opinions and interpretations.

I say, “For made-in-America Negroes.

It means America. For me, it means Africa.”

I wanted to pull the words from the air and stuff them back into my subconscious.

I meant no harm. I just meant what I said.

Like the time I heard about a Black Santa Claus and said, “I’m familiar with that myth, too,” making the gray-bearded Black Santa Claus shout “It’s not a myth!”

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True to our God; True to our native land.

Our connection with land is temporal.

We were packaged and shipped to this land.

A land we cleared, plowed and were used to tame.

Now we sojourn in a land we freed from itself, land that connects those separated from their mother’s story.

Sometimes we camp out on fatherless concrete while others own and tax the soil.

True to our God; true to our native land: A powerful call to action, a life-changing choice.

Not sure about your native land?

Be true to something.

Let your life fertilize land on both sides of the ocean.

Living Inside the Jar

by Lauren Odom

“But, Mom, I hate the smells. Those eyeballs are especially creepy,” I said. Shivers went up and down my back. We pulled into the driveway of the old white house. It was small enough just for a grandma her size. There was a swing out front rocking back and forth as the smoke rocketed out of the chimney.

“Bye, Mom,” I sighed as I got out of the car. I rang the doorbell reluctantly. Anna Fae opened the door with a smile.

I gave her a half smile. Anna Fae waved as the car slowly pulled out of the driveway.

“Now, come in. No need to wait outside. It’s too cold,” Anna Fae beckoned. I dragged myself inside as Anna closed the door, revealing an old antique house. It was misty and dry, but a sight to see: framed newspaper articles, antique owls on the walls, her famous glass eyeballs, and a big pile of unopened mail that she keeps on the kitchen table.

“Well, would you like some tea or something?” Anna asked.

“No, Grandma Fae, I’ll just sit here and watch the TV.” Anna Fae sighed and sat down in her beige chair with the floral patterns and continued to watch TV. I just kicked my shoes off, hopped on the couch, landing perfectly, then started to change channels.

“No, no, definitely not…”

“Stop, stop it there,” Anna Fae said, “I’ve been wanting to see that election on the news.”

I stopped it and rolled my eyes. Anna Fae stared at the TV, blinking slowly. I stared at it, not really listening.

“We are down here coming to you live from one of the voting polls in Atlanta. There are crowds and crowds of people ready to vote. It will be a long wait for many,” the TV announced.

Different people stood in line waiting patiently to vote. Many people came on the TV talking about the long wait.

“Yeah, I’ve been out here for about three hours tryin’ to vote.

I’m gettin’ real impatient with all these people,” one man said with a raspy, monotone voice.

“You know,” Anna Fae said, “African Americans didn’t get to vote way back in the ‘40s.”

“I know Grandma Fae; we talked about it in school,” I said.

“No, no, no, what they teach you in school is what generally happened at that time. There is way more to it than that,” Anna Fae said.

“Really? We just learned about how black people were able to vote after slavery,” I said.

“Yes, but all of them lost their rights because of segregation,” Anna Fae said.

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“Really?” I ask.

“Wow, why did he give you those jellybeans?”

“Yes, let me tell you about a time when blacks held most of the votes, but they never could really vote,” Anna Fae started to explain. I listened as my grandma told the story.

“He said he wanted to show me how the people wanted us to be. They were the jar. We were the jellybeans they held together, never to go outside the jar. We were always held inside that jar, and inside that jar we were treated badly,” Anna Fae continued.

“Leading up to the final events in the late ‘40s, blacks were often denied the right of voting. Even though we had the right to vote, we couldn’t because many whites gave us literacy tests.”

“What is a literacy test?”

“I’m about to tell you,” Anna Fae said. “Literacy tests were given to us to keep us from voting. They included more advanced things that blacks weren’t taught at the time. Many of those tests, as I believe, were counting jellybeans in a jar and other crazy things in that nature.

They would do anything to keep us from voting.”

“The tests were a way to keep black people from voting. White people often harassed black people who wanted to vote. I just remember one day after my father got home, he was really mad about something.” Anna Fae said.

He said he wanted to show me how the people wanted us to be. They were the jar.

“How were the literacy tests so hard?” I asked.

“Well, we didn’t really have a good education back when I was young. Many blacks didn’t even learn the things you learn today. They mostly learned sewing or woodworking. There were almost 100 of us in one classroom with one teacher, so it was pretty hard to learn,” Anna Fae said.

“Yeah, one day my father brought me home a bag of those jellybeans. They were wonderful, but also symbolized the way it was back then and the way blacks were treated.”

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“What was he mad about, Grandma Fae?” “Well, one of his friends was arrested down at the voting polls and they probably beat him senseless. It was the first time I saw my father cry, so I started to cry.”

“Wow!” I gasped.

“They arrested many people on false charges. Later on, blacks stopped trying to vote. No one could take any of the harassments and beatings anymore. In the early 1940s, none of them even dared to vote. They just watched as person after person was elected into office by the white population.”

“But—” I interrupted, but Anna Fae continued.

“Hush, let me at least finish the story. Because of this, many black neighborhoods stayed in poverty. The neighborhoods were unfit to live in. There were broken windows, paint chipping off the houses, bumpy roads, and really dirty bathrooms and classrooms.”

“Was your house like that, too?” I asked.

“What?” I exclaimed.

“Well, there is one way to put my house: beaten up. My parents could never afford anything and weren’t educated enough to get jobs that could pay for a better one. My house was a yellowish color with green stains. The one thing that I remember most was this big tree out front that I would just climb and climb, wondering when the fighting and the pain with white people would end. I just climbed away all the pain of it all.”

“They came back with 25,000 votes. William Hartsfield hired those black policemen, but it was a small success. They couldn’t carry guns, served only black neighborhoods, and couldn’t arrest white citizens.”

“Wow,” I said.

“The mayors that were being elected never did anything to even help the populations, even though the black population held 25% of the electoral vote.”

“Is 25% a lot?” I ask.

“Yes, that was a big chunk of an electoral vote of the city’s population,” Anna Fae says. “The whites needed those votes to win the election. It would put any candidate at an untouchable place, but sadly the black population couldn’t vote. This was all about to change very soon.

“In 1949, John Wesley Dobbs, president of the NAACP, and A.T. Walden, leader of the Fulton county citizens’ democratic club, formed an organization called the Atlanta Negro Voters League (ANVL). This organization was formed on a non-partisan basis to make sure that black republicans and democrats worked together in selecting a candidate. Their job was to get all the African Americans so they could register to vote. Then, the program asked William Hartsfield to hire black police officers. He said, ‘Come back to me when you have 10,000 votes.’

“Guess what?”

“Well, what was the point of hiring black policemen when they didn’t have many rights?” I asked angrily.

“Segregation was legal as long as it was separate but equal. It was never like that. As you can see, the white candidates didn’t always fulfill their promises to the black voters. They often lied and deprived the black population of all their rights.

“The ANVL wanted more than this. They wanted to elect people that were good candidates. They went to the executive office, which was composed of the wealthiest and most influential professional African American men in Atlanta. These men chose black republicans and democrats to run for office.

“They campaigned in secret. They had to. They didn’t want to spur prejudice from the white population against any candidate. If they did, many of the white population would get mad and might even start a riot. Before every election, the ANVL mailed postcards to all the city’s black voters to inform them about the program and their respective world leaders.”

“Did blacks really run for office during this time?”

“No,” Anna Fae said. “Both black republicans and democrats pledged to only work with white moderates to keep white racists from gaining office. So, they basically just worked with the unprejudiced whites to run for office.”

“The 1949 mid-term election for the Fifth Congressional District seat demonstrated the impact of 10,000 newly registered 57

black voters. This was all thanks to the Atlanta Negro Voters League. In years to come, African American votes helped to secure other electoral victories in Atlanta. Rufus Clement’s election in 1953 was a result, because he was the first black member of the Atlanta Board of Education. That was the day that my father sat me down and told me about ANVL, with my mother’s help of course.”

“What day was it?”

“I just told you, it was the day Rufus Clement was elected to the board.”

“Oh,” I realized.

“Because of the Atlanta Negro Voters League, blacks had the right to vote without harassment and prejudice. This is the reason why many blacks today have the right to vote. It was really tragic just how much the white people wanted to get rid of all black people.”

“Really, is that what happened?” I asked.

“Yes, it’s all true,” Anna Fae said.

“Did you ever get to vote for someone, Grandma Fae?” “No, I was too young, and black women couldn’t vote,” Anna Fae said.

“I thought women got to vote in 1920,” I said in astonishment.

“That was white women, Sweetie. Black women voted in 1965 after black men got to vote in 1949, but that story is for another day,” Anna Fae said.

“Aww…” I said.

Knock! Knock! Anna Fae opened the door to a smiling face of my mom. She was tall, caramel brown, wore glasses, and 58

had a kind of skip in her step as she walked. She was intelligent, successful, and always seen as the person to go to for help.

“Well, look who’s here…why, if it isn’t my little Carol.”

“Hi, Mom,” Carol said.

“I was just telling your daughter here about the Atlanta Negro Voters League,” Grandma Fae said.

“Yeah, I remember that story, but last time my dad told me about it,” she said with a look on her face.

“Well, I’m telling you what my dad told me if you don’t mind that,” Anna Fae responded.

“Yeah, I really do miss him a lot,” Carol said sadly.

“What happened to Granddad?” I said.

“Well, he died of a heart attack before you were born.”

“Oh, I wish I could have met him.”

“He was a truly great man. We all miss him, but I had to keep moving forward after that. That is why I smile all the time, and so should you,” Anna Fae said.

“I’m really sorry for the way I acted when I didn’t want to come over here. I really am thankful that Grandma Fae taught me about the Atlanta Negro Voters League. I might tell my teacher about it and see if I could get any extra credit from writing a report on it,” I added.

“Well, that’s a first,” my mom says as she rolled her eyes.

“You people have to be on your way out of here now. Bye,” Anna Fae said as she escorted us out of the door with a smile.

One week later: “The Atlanta Negro Voters League was created to get African Americans to vote. They helped secure over 10,000 votes for one candidate that ran for office. The black vote was one of the most influential votes of this time period. The ANVL helped secure the voting rights we have today. Thank you.” I sit down in my seat, proud of what I said.

“Thank you, Ashley, for the very informative presentation,” my teacher says in a very small tone of voice. I nod my head and think to myself that I should call Grandma Fae later that day.

“Hello, Grandma Fae, I did it!” I say excitedly over the phone after school.

“Good, good, I knew you would take something that I said seriously one of these days…just one of these days, girl. I am just really proud of you, Ashley. You have really made this little old lady proud.”

59

Rev. Dr. Joseph Lowery

by Kalin Thomas

“We know now there were no weapons of mass destruction over there. But Coretta knew and we knew that there were weapons of misdirection right down here.” Those were the controversial words of the outspoken civil rights leader, Reverend Dr. Joseph Lowery, who got a standing ovation at the 2006 funeral of Coretta Scott King.

Known as the “Dean of the Civil Rights Movement,” Lowery is fearless when it comes to speaking the truth. He honed his courage in the early 1950s in Mobile, Alabama, where he headed the Alabama Civic Affairs Association and led successful protests against desegregation of buses and public places.

He later formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose well-publicized marches and protests led to the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. As co-founder of the Black Leadership Forum, Lowery encouraged the U.S. to protest apartheid in South Africa and was instrumental in the prison release and eventual election of Nelson Mandela to the Presidency of that country.

Now retired, Lowery has an Atlanta street named after him.

The Joseph E. Lowery Institute for Justice and Human Rights at Clark Atlanta University also bears his name. Reverend Lowery’s footprints are on the International Civil Rights Walk of Fame. He gave the benediction at the inauguration

of President Barack Obama, and has been named one of the Fifteen Greatest Black Preachers by Ebony magazine.

During Black History Month in 2012, the former pastor of Cascade United Methodist Church reflected on how he became aware of race as a youth, his relationship with Dr. King, and seeing America vote for its first black president.

Rev. Joseph E. Lowery: When I was 12 years old, I was coming out of a shop in my hometown of Huntsville, Alabama when a police officer decided he wanted to come in at the same time. He took his night stick and hit me in the stomach and pushed me back into the restaurant and said, “Get back Nigger, don’t you see a white man coming in?” I was embarrassed, humiliated and angry. So I went home to see what I could find to [violently] handle the situation, but my father came home and stopped me. He carried me down to the chief of police and the mayor and protested vigorously, but the mayor said there was nothing he could do. I think that incident was very significant in shaping my whole philosophy toward race. Thankfully it didn’t lead me to hate, but it spurred me to be resistant.

Aside from my father, Martin [Luther King, Jr.] was probably the most influential in helping me shape my attitude toward the civil rights movement. I admired his courage and the depth of his commitment. Martin asked me to chair the committee that was taking the demands of the Selma to Montgomery Voting Rights 61

March to the governor of Alabama, George Wallace. Most of all, the movement inspired those who had been oppressed to look up and have a new opinion of themselves. And a new level of self esteem and self appreciation was developed in the minds of black people everywhere. And that was as important as the legislation that came from it.

When we got the Voting Rights Act passed in 1965, we felt one day there would be a black President but didn’t think we’d live to see it. And when it happened it was a “great gettin’ up morning” for us. And for me particularly, when Obama called and asked me to give the [inaugural] benediction. When I was standing there on the Capitol steps, I heard the voice of a young preacher standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, summoning America to come out of the low land of race and color to the higher ground of content of character. And here I was participating in a ceremony that was the nation’s response to that call. It was a great day, and I’ll never forget it as one of the most fulfilling moments of my life.

Rev. Lowery said he believes there is still much work to do for civil and human rights, and he hopes his generation has inspired the youth to take up the mantel.

62

路MARTIN

LUTHER

KING.;,路 JR."

APRIL

4, 1968

The Movement Lives:

The Great Speckled Bird Responds to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Death

by Cat Williams

“Don’t Mourn — Organize.”

The call to action arcs above a halftone portrait of Industrial Workers of the World activist Joe Hill on the front cover of the April 12, 1968 edition of Atlanta underground newspaper The Great Speckled Bird.

Beneath the tribute to Hill, well below the fold and in tastefully kerned uppercase letters, is the dedication, “MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. APRIL 4, 1968.” The publication was circulated eight days after King’s assassination. It was The Great Speckled Bird’s third issue.

Perhaps the relationship between King and Hill isn’t mind-blowingly abstract. Both fought for civil rights, even if Hill’s battle didn’t fall under the capital “C” and “R” of King’s. Hill wrote songs to inspire activism, King delivered speeches. But the decision of the newly established, progressive paper in King’s hometown to parallel — perhaps even overshadow — King’s death with that of Hill’s on their front cover days after the Civil Rights leader’s death may seem unexpected, to say the least.

But that was The Bird. A weekly newspaper printed from 1968-1975, The Great Speckled Bird gave a voice to the historically silenced progressive and protest culture of Atlanta. At one time the largest paid weekly newspaper in Georgia — an

accomplishment that intimidated its conservative opponents enough to lead to a firebombing of the newspaper’s offices — The Great Speckled Bird’s mission was, according to founding editor Tom Coffin, to “bitch and badger, carp and cry, and perhaps give Atlanta (and environs, ‘cause we’re growing, baby) a bit of honest and interesting and, we trust, even readable journalism.”

They never printed the expected.

The inside cover of the April 12, 1968 issue featured an excerpt of King’s speech, “Beyond Vietnam,” originally delivered exactly one year before his death. The opening paragraph reads: Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours.

The initiative to stop it must be ours.

67

The Great Speckled Bird took King’s words, “somehow this madness must cease,” to heart. The madness — the killing in Vietnam, the subverted efforts of Americans speaking out against it, the deficit of civil rights or Civil Rights around the world — wasn’t going to stop because an incredible man died.

So, neither would The Bird.

As J. Otis Cochran, a resident of Atlanta’s Vine City wrote for The Bird, “This is an hour of meditation and this is an hour of challenge.” The challenge — the initiative that King cites in his “Beyond Vietnam” speech — is the responsibility of the people to keep working for the progress King believed in.

He honors King’s life by urging readers to act on behalf of his legacy. “We all loved him. And the testimony of that love must be measured in whether we find new solutions…” Martin Luther King, Jr.’s message of Civil Rights wasn’t limited to his lifetime, or to the South, or to America. Cochran and The Bird staff begged readers not to let the madness win, but to take ownership of “the initiative to stop it.”

The Great Speckled Bird didn’t fill its pages recounting the good that King accomplished, or the tragedy of losing him. Instead, it printed articles about anti-war protests, featured politically-provocative poetry and advertised lectures with titles like “On Black Nationalism and the Struggle for a Socialist America.” In April of 1968, there was no time to mourn.

With madness gaining an extra point from King’s death, the need to organize was more urgent than ever. And the causes in need of movement initiatives were ever-growing.

The Bird saw the Civil Rights Movement as a constantly propelling pillar of progress, not as an era that ended with the death of its most beloved leader or even with the end of segregation. The tenets of the movement were just as apt when applied to the Vietnam War or early twentieth century unions. The decision of The Bird to place Martin Luther King, Jr.’s death announcement beneath that of Joe Hill’s wasn’t one 68

of disrespect, but rather served to represent the immortal idea of movement.

Tucked in the corner of the far-right column on page seven of the April 12, 1968 edition of The Great Speckled Bird — between an article and an ad — is a four-sentence biography of Joe Hill. In Atlanta, Georgia, eight days after the city’s own son Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in a fellow Southern city, the story of Joe Hill’s life was not important.

But the three words famously associated with his death were.

“Don’t Mourn — Organize.” The Great Speckled Bird’s plea to Atlanta in April of 1968 — like the legacy of King and Hill before him — may be rooted in history, but lives on to move us forward.

SOMEHOW THIS MADNESS MUST CEASE

Somehow this madness must cease. We must 'stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I s~ak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative !o ~top it mu~t _~eour!_~ _

As we counsel young men concerning military service we must clarify for them our nation's ~role in Vietnam and challenge them with the al .ternative of conscientious objection.

••••

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men I have told them that Molotov cocktail B and rifles would not solve their 'I~ In 1957 a sensitive American official overI have tried to offer them my deepest problems. . ,seas said that it see.rned to him that our nation compassion while maintaining my conviction that j was on the wrong .side of a world revolution.

VietSouth 1. End all bombing in North and social change comes most meaningfully through : During the past 10 years we have seen emerge a. , nam. non-violent action. But they asked--and rightly pattern of suppression which now has justified Z. Declare a unilateral cease-fire in the hope I i the presence of U. S. mili~ary "advisors" in Vene- so--what about Vietnam? They asked if our own that such action will create the atmosphere for ne-.' i zuela. This need to maintain social stability for nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to gotiation. accounts for the counterrevolusolve its problems to bring about the changes it : our investments e 3. Take immediate steps to prevent other wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew j tionary action of American forces in Guatemala. battlegrounds in Southeast Asia by curtailing our used being are helicopters that I could never again raise my voice against ,It tells why American military build-up in Thailand and our interference the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos with- . : against guerrillas in Colombia and why American in Laos. out having first spoken clearly to the greatest . napalm and green beret forces have already been 4. Realistically accept the fact that the Nat. actsuch with is It ;active against rebels in Peru. purveyor of violence in the world today--my own ional Liberation Front has substantial support in • government.

For the sake of those boya, for the ivity in mind t~t the words of the late John F. in role South Vietnam and must thereby playa Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago sake of this government, for the sake of the hunfuture any in and negotiations any meaningful of thousands trembling under our violence, he said, "Tho.e who make peaceful revolution I dreds Vietnam government. 'impossible will make violent revolution inevitaI cannot be silent.

5. Set a date that we will remove all foreign ble. " From Martin Luther King, Jr., "Beyond Viettroops from Vietnam in accordance with fbe 1954 nam." ESSAYS TODAY 6, 1968.

Geneva Agreement.

!

i

Non-violence is dead. Thursday, April 4th it took its last futile brea th. Buried with the abortive philosophy is America' s final hope for a bloodless revolution •.. some said it was already too late anyway •.. now there is no doubt .••

"And I looked, and beheld a pale and hell followed with him. And over the fourth part of the earth, hunger, and with death, and with

horse: and his name was Death the power was qiven to them to kill with sword, and with the beasts of the earth." Rev. 6: 8

White racists called him" Martin' Lucifer Nigger" ••• Black radicals . called him "Tom". The truth being somewhere between the two conrecture , To the majority of Afro-American youth, to the dropout middle class, discontented, confused white youth, he was the method between apathetic fear and bloody drs pair .

"And (beheld, and 10, a black horse; and he that sat upon him had a pair of ha lances in his hand."

Rev. 6: 5

Now the Middle Way is blocked to us. The corpses of Mack Parker, Medgar, Malcolm, a hundred other forgotten martyrs, and now Martin Luther King are the barrier.

We agreed with Rap and Stokely, yes, America is corrupt. yes, America is oppressive, America is cancerous and blind with hate, but we insisted, there is another way .•• Death rattles, the world over, belied that hope ...

"Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fomtcations , nor of their thefts."

Rev. 9: 21

This na tion was founded on a genocidal premise.

We are the only nation to have had extermination of the aboriginal populace as a national policy ..• we have experienced war in every decade since our inception ••. of the thirty million black men and women-wrested from their Afri~ home only half chat number survived our violence ..• we are the only nation to have used atomic weapons •.. we utilize chemical and biological weaponry daily with impunity •. our folklore, indeed our history, is both brutal and homocidal. •. we have chosen to surpress that history deep within the subconscious of our civilization, but it remains as the undercurrent of our every action, our" secret", our guilt, defended to the extent of mass murder, rather than accepted.

Non-Violence has failed because we are not a non-violent people, because we have neither the spiritual maturity nor the historical integrity to admit our transgressions against our own species ... we are fat children defending the empty cookie jar ••.

*

"There wa s a time the t I wen t blind, It was the darkest day I ever saw, It was the day that I went blind.

I moaned the day that I went blind, I moaned the day that I went blind, Oh, Lord, tell me how long, Am I always to be blind?"

"You can call' Bloody murder' when yo wants me out yo way, that's all right, man, you gWine-a need my help some day.

6--the creat speckled bird

eee

If your house catches on fire, and there ain't no water round , If your house catches on fire, and there ain't no water round, Throw your trunk out the Window and let that shack durn down. "

* Traditional blues as collected in "The Meaning of the Blues"

by Paul Oliver. ************* Non-violence has failed .•• that is certain ••• but some, myself, will always abhor Violence as a way of life, even though it be the only way, even though it be the very essence of l.ife •••• and where does that leave us? ••• mourning both black and wh ite graves, unable to condemn white violence in the face of black violence, unable to look on black faces and say "Asaalam aliecam ..... unsure of white brothers or black brothers, unable to stem the flow of blood because my philosophy, my ideology is impotent •••

So the revolu tion will come ••• and ••• go ••• and ••• come again, we have taken this evolutionary experiment too seriously, perhaps we were doomed to failure from the outset and like all species will pass on in biologic procession to the godlike ••• to think we could be maybe it is just a metabolic hallucination both gods and men ••• in passive harmony with the universe ••• Ironic that man has protected and isolated himself so well from inter-specific aggression that now he must vent his own natural aggressions in this suicidal manner.

Same Old, Same Old you are black, right? what black is it that shines so Violently illuminating even some grey cats wh 0 ain't exactly fashionably freaky behind this shithouse confinement. biologically impossible, improbable, or just excused by ratio?

The revolution

storms and the cancer be damned;

but there arc survivors, sole survivors for now ..••.. and they generate according to cosmic geometrics Keep on Keepin On, till you are white, right? what white is it, that shines so Violently illuminating even some black cats Who ain't exactly fashionably freaky behind this shithouse confinement The revolution .. etc .• etc •. etc .• Jim, the species is II stagnant detail all but inviting the evolution of an incompatible insect or virus or some three-headed-striped avenger.

-cric

bonner-

ZEBRAPOWER For

the Late

Newark:

July,

Dr.

Martin

Luther

King

1967

The panther has not fed in a long time They will hunt him on the rooftops and incinerator firescapes.

(Joe Stoat, Joe Pulaski and Bob Callamini have their guns cocked already)

Listen: the jackel sirens whine in the city The shadows are full of the hunters and the hunted Tarzan MightyThor Batman KingKong and the IncredibleHulk are abroad tonight Dormant monsters, wheaties-fatted, sprung out of the tube onto ourstreet

Listen: The jackel sirens wnme out of the cities down the routes of access and into ourtown The panther has passed this way already several times, through the back yard - down by the play gym

Listen: it is not too late to turn 0(( the commercial. you and I shall divert the whitehunters so that the panther can lick his wounds feed his children and sate his inc redible hunger

COME ON ALL YOU ZEBRA PEOPLE OUT OF THE SHADOWS we are visible, now, altogether: whinney

We are not afraid of Joe PUlaski We have no enemies named Bob Callamini Comeon Joe Stoat wanta buy our skin genuine installment striped psychedelic? we are too many for a pride of panthers whose tongues are swollen with coal Blackpalmed, blackpinioned on the roofs of Newark Bay the white hunters harrowing out hoofbeats Sing although coal burns down between cheek and bone Go limp there, roll over, hooves up, Zebrapeople: WHITEBLACKBLACKWHITEREDABITWHITEABITBLACKABITREDALLOV

Come on you Z ebrapeople out of the shadows you have nothing to lose but your skins.

Annis Pratt New York/ Atlanta

...zebrapower the great speckled bird--1

HEALING + PAIN Some of the strongest relationships are not familial, but rather, those born out of difficulty. This section is filled with stories about siblings, lovers, fathers, strangers, and comrades-in-arms whose relationships with one another play out against the backdrop of Atlanta’s history from the past 150 years. These stories reveal how pain and healing have the power to affect the trajectory of life.

73

Colors of War

by Megan McHugh

I would make this war as severe as possible, and show no symptoms of tiring ‘til the South begs for mercy.

— General William T. Sherman

I float past the individual church pews, feeling the cool wood under my fingertips as I slide them along, one pew at a time.

Row by row.

I quickly shake my head, trying to let loose the foggy picture suddenly developing against the walls of my better wishes. I see the pews like graves. I’m standing in one large cemetery.

Row by row of grave markers.

Every family member near the people with the same last name. Clusters of families and loved ones. At least they’re all closer to one another? Closer to God? This war has taught me that we all die. It’s the one inevitable, undeniable nugget of

truth I can wrap my tiny fingers around. Lately, that’s all my mind can process. All my hands can hold.

Row by row of empty pews and filled up cemeteries.

I heard a man the other day speak of God. He said He wasn’t there anymore. For anyone. He looked around at the state of the country, split in two.

Both sides arguing until they’re gray and blue in the face, all for the three colors that are now running together on the patchwork flag dangling, tired, at half-mast.

All these colors and different opinions mottle together like puddles in the dirt, making a completely different pigmentation.

Maybe that’s the reason for the war. Too many colors blend together and it starts to turn to a funny hue. Some might call it beautiful. Others might call it “change.” Throw enough dirt and excuses over the puddles and maybe they’ll eventually dry out and disappear. I guess I’m too young to fully understand.

My hands and mind can only contain so much.

I reach the front of the church, where the reverend gives his sermon every Sunday like holy clockwork.

Except for this one.

Fear has infected Atlanta like a parasite. A black plague.

75

Row by row of curious eyes at the front window curtains of nearby houses.

The houses that remain, at least. Monuments I once thought would last the test of time now smashed to rubble like broken teeth. We’re now a blemish on the face of the South.

I look out through the church’s stained glass window and let the rosy color paint my soft cheeks. I can feel the sun warm my skin and it reminds me of hope. The brick this town was built on - now crumbled, old, and forgotten. I reach my arm out and allow the glass to cover my body in various shades. I am a motley colored child of the Civil War. Put all these colors together and what does that make me?

This church.

These rows.

This cemetery.

In all this destruction I can still grasp hope, like a tangible being. It’s right here, in my multicolored palms. It fills my hands.

My mind.

My body.

My skin.

I am a phoenix, engulfed in the flames of hatred and confusion this war has provided. But from them I will rise.

78

And be reborn.

Civil War Brothers: The Reunion

by Akbar Imhotep Zechariah was anxious about his visit back to the south for the reunion with his brother, Jeremiah, who had been forced to serve in the Confederate Army during the Civil War. Likewise, Jeremiah’s excitement grew daily as his brother’s return grew closer. He had not seen Zechariah since he was captured and taken back to his owner.

Memories of Cobb County and the plantations where they grew up always generated mixed emotions for Zechariah. He was born on the Garnes Plantation. His brother was born on the Dobbson Plantation. Forever bonded by their mother’s love, their paths were destined to be different.

Jeremiah’s father was one of the Dobbson boys. Their father owned the plantation and all its inhabitants: the people, the animals, even the insects. Jeremiah’s mother, Carrie Mae, was just another plantation asset or a toy for the boys to use to practice their manhood. Birth complications made Carrie Mae useless for plantation work, and not being needed for house work, Dobbson used her and Jeremiah to settle a debt he owed to old man Garnes.

While working on the Garnes Plantation, Carrie Mae met Samson, a tall, handsome, new arrival from Savannah. Their love blossomed like magnolias, and from their love Zechariah was born. They did their best to protect both boys from the pain of plantation life. Their prayers and love inspired

the boys to finally escape the misery of being another man’s property when they were 18 and 20 years old.

They attempted to escape but were found out. Jeremiah’s surrender allowed Zechariah to avoid capture. Zechariah found the home of a Union sympathizer and was connected to the Underground Railroad. Deciding not to go to Canada, he settled in Rochester, New York and heard Frederick Douglass’ call for Coloreds to serve in the Union Army. He heeded the call and joined the Union Army. After the war, he returned to Rochester and married Beulah Mae Johnson, a recent runaway from a South Carolina Plantation. Their five children grew up and married into free-born and plantation-born families.

Jeremiah was forced to serve as a laborer in the Confederate Army on behalf of old man Garnes’ youngest son. He lost an eye during the Battle of Atlanta. After the war, he married his childhood sweetheart, Pearlie Mae Garnes, who had grown up with him on the Garnes Plantation.

Micah, one of Jeremiah’s grandsons, befriended Booker, a student from upstate New York at Atlanta University. Since they had the same last name, they jokingly pretended to be cousins. Both had been sent to college by their respective churches. Micah was sent to study religion and become a preacher. Booker was on a mission to become a teacher.

81

One day when Booker was telling Micah a story his grandfather had told him about escaping from the Garnes Plantation, Micah realized that it corresponded with a story his own grandfather had told him about his brother that escaped.

Micah realized this meant that he and Booker were definitely related because their grandfathers were brothers. During the school break, Micah told his grandfather Jeremiah all he knew about Booker.

When school came back in session, Jeremiah sent a letter to Zechariah through Micah. Tears and laughter overwhelmed Zechariah as he read his brother’s words. After several letters were exchanged, their children connected and started planning a reunion at the upcoming Juneteenth celebration that was several months away. Northerners and southerners often celebrated the day the Coloreds in Texas finally heard about the Emancipation Proclamation on June 19, 1865.

Jeremiah’s excitement grew in leaps and bounds as June 19th approached. Booker and two of his siblings came to Cobb County early to stay with their great uncle Jeremiah and help plan for the reunion and Juneteenth celebration. Jeremiah had hundreds of question for each of them: questions about their parents, their dreams, and about his brother, their grandfather.

Each answer led to more and more questions.

Booker gave Jeremiah a picture of Zechariah dressed in his Union uniform. Jeremiah’s smile grew wide as he embraced the picture. Then one of Zechariah’s other grandchildren pulled out a picture of Zechariah standing with Frederick Douglass. Jeremiah’s joy morphed into tears as he studied the pictures.

“Uncle Jeremiah, tell us about what you did during the war,” said Booker. Zechariah’s grandchildren grew silent. Jeremiah looked at each of them and started slowly, “Not much to tell. We did whatever we were told to do. We dug trenches.

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Helped cook the meals. Buried those who were killed and helped the injured find help.”

“Grand Pa, did you shoot anyone?” Micah asked.

After a long pause, he answered, “I saw a lot of people die but I didn’t kill anyone. War is nasty business. Let’s talk about something else. That ol’ mean war is behind us.”

“Grand Pa, tell them about the Klan,” Micah urged him.

“These boys don’t want to hear about them Klan folks.”

“Yes, we do. Tell us. Did you shoot any one of them, Uncle Jeremiah?” the youngest one asked.

“No, I didn’t shoot any Klan people. Dealing with them was worse than being in the war.”

“Worse than the war, Uncle Jeremiah? How can that be?”

Booker asked.

“After the war, some folks thought the Coloreds were making too much progress and they wanted to hold us back. When I was helping one of my plantation buddies run for the state house, they burned his house down and came to lynch us, but we hid out in the swamp until the soldiers came and brought us home. My buddy got out of the race and never ran for office again. To me that was scarier than being in the war.”

“Hey everybody, take a look at this.” Micah showed his cousins a picture of Jeremiah standing with Booker T. Washington.

“Is that Booker T. Washington, Uncle Jeremiah?” Booker asked.

“Yes, Booker. That’s the man. Me and some of the other Coloreds met him at that big fair they had over in Atlanta.”

“My Grand Pa says he was one of the greatest Colored men who ever lived. That’s why my dad named me Booker.”

“Some people loved him. Others didn’t. They wanted him to push those white folks. All he wanted to do was show us how to provide for ourselves and build that school in Alabama,” Jeremiah offered.

“That’s exactly what Grand Pa says about him,” Booker continued.

“Let’s eat some dinner. All this talk done made me hungry.”

Jeremiah grabbed his cane and led them into the dining room.

The day of the reunion arrived. The family rooster’s crowing awakened the entire household and long departed ancestors.

Jeremiah took his grandchildren and their relatives to visit Carrie Mae and Samson’s graves. Micah put freshly cut flowers on each of the graves. Then Jeremiah poured a little moonshine at the head of the graves and said a prayer.

When they got back to the house, Zechariah and Beulah Mae were arriving. Jeremiah dropped his cane and limped briskly toward his brother. Zechariah opened his arms and joyously embraced him. Within miles of where they had been born, the sun shined brightly as childhood and wartime memories flooded their consciousness.

As they held each other, time went into hiding. Tomorrow was put on hold and the power of their parents’ love flowed through their veins. Brothers separated by time, war, and distance became a living, breathing, joy-filled monument to a shared legacy.

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Tuskegee Airmen Honored by City Hall

by Kalin Thomas

With the release of George Lucas’ Red Tails, the Tuskegee Airmen seem to be finally getting the recognition they deserve.

On March 7, 1942, the first class of African-American aviation cadets graduated from Tuskegee Army Air Field. Overcoming enormous racism, and with the help of civil rights organizations and the black press, these pioneering aviators became the nation’s first black military pilots.

The 99th Fighter Squadron’s exemplary performance in Italy and North Africa during World War II earned them respect, and in 1948 President Harry S. Truman issued an executive order to eliminate segregation in the U.S. military. As the Tuskegee Airmen celebrated their 70th anniversary in 2012, Atlanta City Councilman Michael Julian Bond honored the surviving local men and women who were a part of the experiment to prove that blacks were just as capable of becoming fighter pilots as whites.

“This is a great American story that new generations need to know. Our children have a lot less barriers today, but they are still stumbling. So they need to see more accurate images of themselves and what they can accomplish. The Tuskegee Airmen soared beyond all expectations,” exclaimed Bond.

This was the first time that the city of Atlanta had honored the Airmen. About 20 Tuskegee Airmen and their friends

and families attended the ceremony, including Val Archer, who was an instrument technician from 1945 to 1949.

“We have a wonderful legacy of achievement and patriotism, and I feel we were key to the decision by President Truman to issue Executive Order 9981 to desegregate the armed forces,” said Archer.

“We had no idea how historic it would be, but as graduates from Harlem Hospital, three of us decided we had to be at Tuskegee. We knew that if black men were going to be airmen, we needed to be their nurses to take good care of them,” said Irma Cameron “Pete” Dryden.

Dryden was with the Nurse Corps from 1943 to 1945. She was the first wife of famous Tuskegee Airmen Charles Dryden, who died in 2008. “I met him my first day there at a party at the officer’s club to say goodbye to the men flying overseas. After only one day, I couldn’t bear to be away from him. When he got back six months later, we were married,” she laughed.

Many didn’t know that the famously cantankerous radio DJ and TV talk show host, James “Alley Pat” Patrick, was also a Tuskegee Airman — he worked the Post Exchange from 1942 to 1945.

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When asked what that time was like during WWII and segregation, Wilbur Mason, who was a civilian Airman from 1943 to 1947, said: “I was from Tuskegee, so I was used to segregation and it didn’t affect me as badly as it did my fellow Airmen from the North. But the history of African Americans in the military rested on our shoulders. We proved that Blacks were not inferior and paved the way for people like [former Secretary of State] Colin Powell.

As members of the Atlanta Chapter, many of the Tuskegee Airmen speak at schools and churches to educate the community about their history. They also have an annual college scholarship fundraiser and the ACE Camp, which teaches youth about aviation.

“Our main goal is to get our story into school textbooks. So we put out a challenge to the education system and the publishing industry to correct that deliberate slight,” said Archer.

This is a great American story that new generations need to know. Our children have a lot less barriers today, but they are still stumbling. So they need to see more accurate images of themselves and what they can accomplish. The Tuskegee Airmen soared beyond all expectations.

Even with the racial barriers and challenges they faced, Airman Ray Williams, who was a fighter pilot from 1943 to 1946, exclaimed, “It was the most exciting time of my life!

And it’s a wonderful feeling to get these accolades today.”

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Dr. Lisa Bratton, who is chairperson of the Atlanta chapter’s scholarship committee, interviewed hundreds of Tuskegee Airmen when she was an oral historian for the National Park Service. “So many of the Airmen grew up here during segregation, so they’ve come full circle to be honored by the city that once discriminated against them,” said Bratton.

The Path to Equality

by Mia Valdez

“Whatcha doin’ here with these Negro kids?” the waiter asked with a strange but angry look on his face. I didn’t answer.

As I looked at my flushed reflection in the silver spoon, all I could see were my hazel eyes blending with my pale red face, thinking of the first time. Why I was here? The day that I went to the first meeting was still fresh in my mind.

“Are you down?” my best friend Tony asked. We were coming from our last class of the day. “They told me that they need a more mixed crowd, and I thought of you and about the situation that happened at the college.” I dared not to bring up the details. I stood up for Tony when he almost got beat up by one of the more popular guys at Georgia Tech, Thomas Block, one of the biggest flirts on campus. He’d hit on anyone.

There was a rumor going around that he had fathered twins during high school. It was how Tony and I had met, and how we had become friends. I thought a moment and said, “I’m down.” That day Tony and I went to the first meeting. The tall man in the all black said, “Now we all know that we have some humans in this world that don’t respect our rights,” he looked around and stared at me. “Well look here, we have a newcomer.” As he looked down at me, he said, “Could you please tell us your name and who brought you here?”

I stood up, slowly rubbing my sweaty palms together. “Hi, my name is Suanoah, and my friend Tony brought me here.” All at once, everyone said, “Hi Suanoah.”

The tall man started to talk more about the sit-in. “We’re going to be sitting in at Rich’s Department Store in three

weeks. No matter what the public has to say, just remember that we’re fighting for our equality and our rights.”

After the meeting, Aaron, a tall black boy who attended school with Tony and I, walked up to us. Tony rolled his eyes and gave a nudge to me. “Don’t you think you’re gonna get hurt helping us?” Aaron asked rudely. I walked away as Tony turned and ran after me. He said, “Aaron is no good and you shouldn’t be talking to him.”

“It’s not that I think Aaron is bad. I’m just nervous about what other people will think about me and how I will be treated after we sit-in. I just need to go home and think about this.”

Once home, I sat my mom down and told her about my fears of being a part of the sit-in. She didn’t have anything to say to me. “Honey, just follow your heart,” was her only advice.

That’s not what I was hoping to hear. I needed someone to tell me exactly what to do, so I went to my dad. He was the perfect person to ask because he had been involved in a situation like this many years back when he was my age. He had fought a white man named Troy because he disrespected a black woman who was only walking down the street.

“Dad, I need your help. Tony asked me if I wanted to join a sit-in, and I’m questioning if I should do it.”

In reply, my dad said, “Well, honey, do you think it’s the best thing for you to help them?”

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I thought a moment and said, “To tell the truth, I really think that I should help them, but I’m thinking about what other people will say if I do.”

Tony picked me up and we headed towards the church. We stopped at a stoplight. Man! Here come the police. “KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK.” The police knocked on the window.

“You shouldn’t think about what other people think, because it’s their opinion. I think you should help them because they deserve the same rights as we do.”

“Y’all ain’t planning on doing nothin’ sneaky are ya?’’ the police men asked. Tony didn’t answer so I said something.

It finally hit me why I should help them. I slept on it.

Two weeks passed and Tony called. “Hey, Mike told me when we’re going to the department store.” I made a face.

“And who is Mike?” I asked.

“He was the guy in all black at the meeting.”

“So when is it?”

“It’s on March 14th around 4 p.m.”

“O.K. see you there.”

“Today’s the day,” I said to myself. I got up and put on my all black clothes. Then my dad appeared behind me.

“So are you ready?” my dad asked.

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” I said, my voice wavering.

“Just remember you’re doing this for their rights, and don’t listen to what others say,” my dad said as he patted my shoulders and walked out of the room. The phone rang. I answered.

It was Tony.

“Hey, I’m on my way,” is the first thing he said.

“Alright. I’m outside.”

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“No sir, we’re just going over to church,” I said as I pointed to the church where we met at.

“You can go,” he commanded. Tony sped ahead.

“Why you lie? You know he gonna be wondering!” Tony asked as he looked at me with an angry look on his face.

“You know he wasn’t gonna let us go if I said, ‘Sir we’re just going to sit-in at Rich’s Department Store,’ now would he?” I asked him. Tony didn’t answer; he turned into the parking lot, parked, and got out without saying a word. He walked into the church.

I just sat in the car for a few minutes, questioning if I should really take part in the sit-in. The police officer had really shaken me up. As I looked up from my sweaty palms, I saw everyone heading out of the church and heading towards Rich’s Department Store. I jumped out of the car and ran to catch up with the rest of the group as they approached the entrance to Rich’s Magnolia Room restaurant.

~ I looked up to meet the eyes of the waiter who was questioning me.

“That’s not their name, and I’m here because they deserve the same rights as we do.” I said very commandingly. He looked down at me, rolled his eyes, and went on to serve the white person next to me. Tony whispered something in my ear, but

I couldn’t understand it because I was so distracted by the police officer walking in. He sat next to me, cleared his throat and looked at me with a weird look on his face.

“Don’t I know you from somewhere?” he asked.

“No sir,” I said as I turned to look at Tony.

He tapped me on my shoulder. “You’re the gal that I pulled over with that Negro boy right there.”

I didn’t say anything as I looked at my sweaty palms. Then I thought about what my dad had said and I looked at the officer and said, “Sir, I’m here because too long they’ve had to suffer, not enjoying or having the same possibilities that we do. Today I believe that they shouldn’t wait any longer to have equality, like us. They should be able to sit at the counters of white restaurants without having a waiter be rude or say anything smart. We shouldn’t be segregated in restaurants.” I stopped as I heard people clapping. I turned around and saw everyone at the counter was looking at me, smiling and saying that I was right and to be honest. Then I turned to look at the people in the booth. They stared back at me with blank faces.

I knew what they were thinking, but I didn’t care.

Epilogue Suanoah, Tony, and the rest of the group were arrested and only the whites were released from jail the next day. Mike was sentenced to one year in jail for planning the sit-in. Tony, Aaron, and the other black boys were released a week later.

When Tony and Suanoah saw each other after they got out of jail, they grew to have closer feelings for each other. After about a year, Tony finally popped the question. They had two beautiful kids. Tony joined the Navy, went to Vietnam, and came back a strong, confident man. Aaron later on died from lung cancer, leaving behind three kids and a wife.

By the fall of 1961, it finally hit Mr. Rich, the owner of Rich’s Department Store, that he should desegregate. About a month after he desegregated his restaurant, all the restaurants in Atlanta, Georgia were desegregated. The blacks finally got what they wanted — their rights and equality.

The police officer stood up, looked at everyone at the counter and said, “You all know that this is illegal, and you have to go to jail.” The police officer called into his walkie talkie for backup. A few minutes later, three police cars pulled up. As I was put in handcuffs, I turned and looked at all the people sitting in the booths and smiled. Then I got in the police car and went to jail.

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Following in Their Footsteps

by Tyrique Barnett

It was the spring of 1968. Slowly and softly, a swift breeze blew outward into an empty street, howling like a ghost. The moon glittered in the sky, lighting the dark concrete. A few feet away from the town center sat the lake, where everyone would visit and fish. The water was still, except for the rippling of waves created by bugs skittering and skating across the water.

A few minutes from the lake was the Williams’ suburban home. Inside sat two kids who looked to be at least eleven, both working on their homework. They sat at a folding table, the color of a saddened gray.

“Finished!” exclaimed Jillian.

Jackson, her brother, shot her a disapproving scowl. Jillian was a tall girl for her age. Though only eleven years old, she looked like a fourteen year old. She wore glasses that carefully rested against her face, though most of the time they slid down her slender nose. She had freckles spread over her face, which made it look terribly scarred. She wore hand-medown shoes from her brother that fit tightly against her toes.

She had light brown eyes and dark brown hair that drooped down to her bony shoulders. She spoke with a thick southern drawl. She also loved to correct people. In fact, just last week she corrected her math teacher on some complicated algebra.

Jillian had yelled out “You’re wrong!” which earned her yet another detention. Despite the fact that she was in trouble, she thought of her detentions as personal trophies that no one could take away.

“You can’t be finished yet,” Jackson complained. “I just finished the first section, and I haven’t even made it to the back.”

“There ain’t a back, for ya information,” Jillian replied.

Jackson was Jillian’s twin. He was the same age as Jillian.

They looked the same while they were young, but as they slowly aged over time, they began to contrast. Jackson looked about his age, and was much shorter than his sister. He also had light brown eyes, but he had jet black hair. His hair was greased to a spiky, firm hold. He had scars all over his face, reminders of previous quarrels with other boys. Jackson was also a football player. He was the captain of his team, and his throwing arm was to boast about. If he really wanted to, he could throw the ball across the whole field.

Jillian shuffled through her papers and stacked them neatly into a large pile. She cocked her head to the side and glared down at her watch.

“Mom and Dad should be here any minute now,” she said, shoving her hand to her mouth to yawn. “I’ll justa’ sit here an’ wait here and watch ya slowly finish that there easy worksheet I finished in two minutes flat while you on the other hand — ” Suddenly, Jillian and Jackson’s parents slipped into the house.

Mr. Williams rested against the kitchen counter, while Mrs. Williams placed her belongings next to him. Mr. Williams’ now oversized shirt was stretched to the point where a fat person could wear it. His shirt was torn from the abdomen 93

to the waist, and clung lifelessly around his neck. His pants were scuffed and covered with dirt. There were holes in both knees.

Mrs. Williams stood still, her mouth in the shape of an O. Mr. Williams scowled, and angrily pointed Jillian up to her room.

Jillian stomped up the stairs and Jackson timidly followed.

Mrs. Williams wore a pink plaid dress. The bow was missing from the back. The edge of the dress was tattered. From the looks of them Jillian and Jackson could tell that they had again been protesting for civil rights alongside their friend and mentor, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. This wasn’t the first time their parents had come home from a protest looking like this. The kids were frightened for their parents.

The next few days were tense in the Williams house. Until one day, everything changed. A high-pitched wail woke Jillian and Jackson; it was as if someone was trying to blow out their eardrums before they even got to use them. Jillian always used her ears but Jackson never did. With him, everything went in one ear and out the next.

“Hi Mamma, Daddy,” Jillian said.

“Hi kids,” Mrs. Williams replied.

“How’s your job going?” Jillian asked, sarcastically.

“Actually, it’s fine. Everything is good,” Mr. Williams answered for his wife.

“Good? Everything’s good? Look at ya selves! You look like something this here Jackson would puke up! Filthy!” Jillian’s face began to flush as she grew angry.

“Now young lady,” Mr. Williams said, his voice booming, “you DO NOT have the right to judge me or your mother like that!”

“Yeah,” Jillian said, “just like I don’t have a right to sit where I want to sit on a bus! Why don’t you guys do something that actually matters for a change?” Jillian paused. She eyed Jackson, then her parents. Jackson stood rooted to the spot, petrified. Jillian continued, “Stop risking your lives for something that ain’t ever gonna change. We NEED parents! We NEED someone to love us! Do y’all not care enough for us not to commit suicide over a fantasy?”

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Jillian and Jackson traced the noise back to their parents’ room. They hid around the corner hiding just enough where they could peek inside the room. Inside, Mr. and Mrs. Williams sat on their four-post bed. Mrs. Williams’ face was tear-streaked, while she sat there sobbing like a baby. The television was on, making her red, puffy eyes glisten in the light. Jillian and Jackson had seemed to walk in on a proceeding conversation.

“He was such a good man,” Mrs. Williams said before she broke off into tears once again. She took in a breath and snuffled a little. “All of our work - worthless. What do you reckon we do now?”

“Honey, our work is important. We may have lost a great colleague, but — ” He was interrupted.

“How are we supposed to deal with this?” Mrs. Williams’ childish wailing grew louder. She grabbed a tissue from her left side and blew her nose fairly hard. Mr. Williams, plopping his hand on her shoulder in a comforting sort of way, said in a soft voice, not usually used by him, “It’ll be fine.

We’ll be okay, I promise.”

Just then, the twins popped their heads into the door. Once inside, Jillian nudged Jackson. Jackson began to speak, reluctantly, “Mom, Dad, I… err…. I mean… We were wondering

what is going on. We heard… you said that someone died.

What’s going on?” Mr. Williams stood up and motioned them to step outside.

“Who died?” Jackson asked, stepping outside.

“Dr. King was killed today,” Mr. Williams replied, with great sorrow.

“What does that have to do with anythang?” Jillian asked.

“Your mom is going through a rough time right now, that’s all.

She’s frightened.”

“What could she possibly be scared of if she’s brave enough to get herself beat’n up in public?” Jillian asked harshly.

“She’s scared that all of our work was for nothing,” replied Mr. Williams ignoring Jillian’s callous comment. Jillian thought to herself, Told ya so.

“But Mom always told us not to give up,” Jackson said, in a high pitched voice. “Why is she giving up?”

Mr. Williams opened his mouth to reply, but nothing came out. He hadn’t expected such a question. How was he supposed to answer?

He replied straightforwardly, “That’s between me and your mom. Besides, she’s not giving up. So I don’t need you guys worrying too. All I want you to do is to remember the funeral is on April 9th. Until then, I don’t need to hear of the subject, ya hear?” And that was that.

The next few days were filled with gloom and sorrow. People were moaning all around the house. If you would have visited them, it would have sounded like a haunted house. School wasn’t going too well for the kids either. Jackson wasn’t completing all of his homework, and believe it or not, Jillian’s

grades were declining. No one was having a good time. The day of the funeral brought more despair onto the family.

Mr. Williams even sniffled sometimes. The first part of the funeral was held at Ebenezer Baptist Church. Lots of people came to the event, though the church could only afford to hold about 100 people. There was a constant pause in the middle of service to pray for the King family. This resulted in a series of break downs from the widow, Mrs. Coretta Scott King. Songs later uplifted the saddening mood lingering in the air. At about 3:30, a second service was held at Morehouse College.

Fifty to one-hundred thousand people attended this procession, due to the unlimited amount of space. Crowds piled to the sides of the road, people trying to get a glimpse of the weeping widow. People gathered everywhere to see the sights.

Children were sitting on their mom’s or dad’s shoulders.

Adults stood on the hoods of cars, buildings, or even managing to get to the top of houses within range of the funeral.

Stores were closed with shopkeepers expecting riots from angry protesters that protested along with Dr. King, though none actually occurred, surprising everyone. The Williams family was walking aside Miss Coretta. Jackson, the one who usually despised any contact with anyone whatsoever, was holding hands with his sister. Mahalia Jackson sang, “Precious Lord, Take My Hand,” the song Dr. King had requested just minutes before his assassination. The service lasted for about two hours, before everyone decided they’d prayed enough. Dr. King’s casket was loaded onto a hearse for the trip to South View Cemetery, founded by former slaves in 1866.

The family made their way back home at about 5:30. The twins sauntered into the house and Jillian motioned Jackson to their room. Jackson loosened his tie’s tight grip from his broad neck. They strolled up the stairs and into the room.

“Ya know what I said to Momma?” Jillian asked.

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“Yeah,” Jackson said, “you said that Momma and Daddy should stop fighting for civil rights, because it will never happen.”

“Well, I kinda want to take it back. I feel bad for what I said.

We should do somthin.”

“Like what?”

“Hang banners I guess. Let’s do it tomorrow.”

“Fine. But I call the green posters!” Jackson exclaimed.

Jillian got up bright and early twisting her blankets. She scooted over towards Jackson’s bed and shook him extra hard.

He sat up with the speed of a bullet. “Flying monkeys in the wall… monkeys!”

“We’re going to hang them around the city,” Jillian answered.

“Then what’s the point? They’re going to get ripped down a few minutes after!” Jackson raised his voice, getting glances from the others in the room.

“Others will appreciate what we’re doing for our heritage.

Besides, ya agreed to do this, for our parents,” Jillian answered. Jackson frowned and grabbed a black marker and a poster board.

“Where are we going to put this stuff, exactly?” Jackson asked angrily, while writing “EQUALITY FOR EVERYONE!” on his poster.

“Shut ya trap; there ain’t monkeys in the wall! Get up an’ get dressed, we’ve got loads ahead of us today!”

“You’ll see when we get there,” replied Jillian.

The twins soon arrived at Tristan Prep, their school. They completed their first three classes, which were math, science, and reading. During lunch recess, a group of five students, including the twins, receded into a vacant office, carrying armfuls of art supplies. They scooted their feet and disappeared behind the big blue office door.

“So this work we’re doing… what is this?” Jackson said stopping in the middle of the corridors.

Inside, they plopped their supplies on a round table. Jillian took charge.

“I want you to go to the back of the room, you and you, go to the corner over there, and Jackson, follow me. Let’s go guys; we only have forty minutes left.”

The kids gathered the art supplies and headed to their separate area of the room. Jillian and Jackson stayed where they were, and worked at the table.

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“Where are we supposed to hang these banners?” Jackson asked.

The kids left the office and walked briskly back to their classroom.

“This,” Jillian said to Jackson, “is only the beginning!”

Discovery in the King Center

by Kitti Murray

I lived in Atlanta almost thirty years before I ever set foot inside the King Center. I am white, and I admit this was an oversight. I thought I could make a statement about my lack of racial sensitivity or civic-mindedness with this fact, but I’m not sure I could make it stick.

My kids went on at least one field trip each to the King Center; so for that reason alone I never felt compelled take them. Besides, we had four squirmy boys, and it is a museum.

Enough said. I grew up in Nashville, Tennessee, where my parents taught me a reverence for Dr. King that persists to this day, but I’m a squirmy adult who doesn’t like museums all that much either.

Then my husband and I moved just a few blocks from Auburn Avenue, and we heard parking was free, so one day we decided to go. As turns it out, this experience was like going to a movie you know nothing about (the best way to see a film, in my opinion), and discovering that not only is it a bona fide blockbuster, but that it is sure to become your all-time favorite movie. The King Center blew me away.

We even sat through the film in the visitor center. Remember, I’m squirmy, so I usually bypass this feature in most museums.

One of my favorite Martin Luther King, Jr. quotes remained on the screen at the end of the movie: Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. It was difficult to watch frame after frame of injustice meted out by men and women who looked so much like me, people who lived in a time I could remember.

It was like looking at the slow dawning of thirty years distilled down to a heartbreaking fifteen minutes. I was stunned.

I sat for a moment, wiping away tears and restoring my face from the crumpled mess it had become. Then I stood and made my way down our row to the aisle.

I looked up to see a woman exiting from the row ahead of us.

She was a lovely woman of color, dressed casually but stylishly, about my age. She could have been me, a few errant tears on her face and all. We looked at each other with a polite little question in our eyes; Want to step ahead of me?

Then she reached out and pulled me into an embrace and said, “That just seemed like the appropriate thing to do!”

I couldn’t have agreed more and told her so. She then said, “You know, I had white friends during those years. I know not everyone was as hateful and evil as the white people you just saw on the screen,” she smiled and added, “I just wanted you to know that.”

“I had black friends back then, too,” I said, a tiny bit proud that I came from Nashville, where our high schools were integrated in the ‘70s, unlike Atlanta’s, “and I know there was a lot of tension, but I didn’t see as much of it as I know there was.”

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We chatted awhile about where we were from and what we did, about our families and what brought us to the museum that day. Then we parted like old friends.

My brief encounter with a stranger at the King Center gives me hope that maybe we can get there, that maybe we’re already on our way, one embrace at a time.

I’ve thought about her a lot since then, about what that hug meant. It was kind, but it wasn’t an act of courage, not these days. Hugging a stranger in public might cost us something, but it will never cost what Martin Luther King, Jr. would have paid for the same act. Nothing like what it cost John Lewis, or Andrew Young, or Rosa Parks to purchase for the next generation. They are the ones who paid for our hug.

Atlanta was known, in those years, as “the city that is too busy to hate.” I think we’re all proud of that. But wouldn’t it be a fine thing if we’d been the city that loved anyway?

I do believe her hug was an act of grace, a shorthand message that said, “In all the pain and sorrow and struggle, there were moments even then when we, black and white Americans, were still able to love each other. In fact, if I’d known you then, I’d have loved you anyway.”

Isn’t that what we wish was written more boldly in our history? Atlanta was known, in those years, as “the city that is too busy to hate.” I think we’re all proud of that. But wouldn’t it be a fine thing if we’d been the city that loved anyway?

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Letters from Your Pal, C.T. Vivian

by Priya Hemphill

A few days ago, a big fat package came addressed to my great grandfather, C.T. Vivian. I call him Papa. I knew I shouldn’t open it, but I just couldn’t help myself. My mom is always saying, “Landon, don’t be snooping around!” The package was big and looked like it had traveled a really long way. I was sitting at my great grandfather’s desk when his secretary dropped it off. I should have been working on my science homework, but instead the package seemed way cooler than the solar system assignment waiting for me. I slowly looked around — no one was watching and there was tape on the desk. I knew I could seal it back up and no one would know that I had even touched the mysterious package. Boy, was I in for a surprise.

What I saw was a note that changed everything I thought about Papa. The first note practically fell out — it smelled like roses and clementines. The writing was cursive and on fancy, pink paper. The return address was from an Olivia Pipe in Paris, France, and it was covered in stamps. I mean, how often do you get a package from ANOTHER COUNTRY?!

I couldn’t help myself. The note said:

April 15, 2013 Dear C.T., My great grandmother has just passed. In her will, it said to send back all of the letters that you, her pen pal, have written to her for you to keep. I have sent them back to you as she requested. I have also included a picture of her. I thought that you might want to know what she looked like. I remember my grandmother telling me that you all were pen pals for 30 years, even after the assignment was over. Unfortunately, most of the letters were lost over time, but we sent you what we still have. I hope that you are well.

Dearest, Olivia Pipe

I stared long and hard at the picture — the photo was worn on the edges and in black and white. The girl looked like she was in her teens; she had long black hair and had on an old fashioned dress with long sleeves and lace. I went to see what else was inside, and what I found must have been the letters — dating back all the way to 1931. 1931?! That was a LOOOOONG time ago! Papa was only in the first grade!

Whoa. I was born in 2001. What was life even like in 1931?

There were no computers, no cell phones and TV! I kept reading to find out.

103

December 14, 1931

September 12, 1936

Dear Francesca,

Francesca,

Hi, nice to meet you. My name is C.T. Vivian. I’m in 1st grade at Lincoln Grade School in Macomb, Illinois. My teacher, Ms. Mayberry, says writing to a pen pal may make me feel less lonely since I’m new here. I just moved here. It’s a lot colder here than in Howard, Missouri, but my mom and Nana say we moved so I can have a better future. Just a few hours ago, I was walking home from school the back way. I stopped where I always stop — by the train tracks. There was a group of bullies that have been bothering me since I moved here. I’m not sure why they don’t like me, but they cornered me and I had to fight them off. The main bully Theodore Derek sent in his friends one by one to hit me. Finally, before I got too tired, I told Theodore to come and fight me. He wouldn’t and they eventually ran off. It was really scary, but I think they are going to leave me alone. Christmas is coming up — mom says it’ll be my first real white Christmas. Last week, we made a family of snowmen in the front yard. I didn’t ask for a whole lot, but I really want the train set in the window at Wrigley’s Toy Shop downtown. I saw it with Nana when we were picking up our food for the week. It’s blue and green with a wooden track. It looks just like the one I pass on the way home from school every day. What are you asking Santa for?

Your new friend, Cordy Tindell Vivian

104

Yesterday was my first day as a 6th grader in middle school. I lined up everybody on the fire escape and told them that we couldn’t fight anymore. Johnny, my best friend, wanted to keep fighting but I think he’ll come around. Since I first moved here and fought off Theodore and his friends, I’ve been sticking up for others kids who need it. Although I haven’t gotten in a fight since then, some of my friends have in order to stick up for other students who are being bullied after school or on the playground. I’m starting a new school and I want to act more like a grown up. Nana says real men don’t fight with their fists, but instead with powerful words. She keeps talking about this Men of Mark book. I found it a long time ago when I was playing marbles and it’s a big, fat book with names of men who are leaders. Nana saw me looking at the book and said, “THOSE are real leaders.” I keep thinking about the guys in Men of Mark. None of them really used violence and they still got people to listen.

Your pal, Cordy Tindell Vivian

February 28, 1952

November 18, 1961

Dear Francesca,

Francesca,

I have just gotten married to my love and soul mate, Octavia, on February 23rd. We had a very simple wedding with only our closest friends and family watching. I think, in total, there were 30 people. Many churches would not allow us to get married there, because of our skin color. It didn’t matter to me though; Octavia looked beautiful in her white dress. Money is tight, so she borrowed the dress from her mom. I wore my best black suit that I had in my closet. I can’t believe I finally found my soul mate. We danced to Etta James’ song “At Last” and I wish I could have frozen that moment forever. We still don't have many of the same rights as white people, but I’m hopeful that one day our kids will be able to get married wherever they want.

I’m so sorry I haven’t had time to write. I just returned from the very first march we have done outside of Montgomery, Alabama.

Where do I begin? In May, I got arrested for the first time in Jackson, Mississippi, for breach of peace. I know some people would be scared, but I wasn’t. I was protesting at the time and the cops were not happy about it. In the South, segregation is even worse.

People don’t want to hear what we have to say. Since then, we’ve been working hard on sharing our story in the South. Not many people here know about what we’re doing for the Civil Rights movement, but I think some new friends just joined after the Albany Movement. As I’ve mentioned before, black people don’t have the same rights or as many privileges as white people. We use different bathrooms, our children attend different schools and we are not treated fairly. The group of men and women I’ve been working with want to end segregation for good. Our leader, Martin Luther King Jr., hates violence. He says the best way to win a fight is through leading by example. Some people really just want to punch and kick to get their way, but Martin says violence isn’t the answer no matter what. Martin is really calm, but when he speaks, everyone listens. We’ve been working in Alabama and our first march that I mentioned before was in Albany, Georgia.

Not too many people attended, but it felt good to make a difference in a new state — no matter how small the action. I felt brave and excited about what we’re doing. I don’t know what will happen next and Martin says we may be attacked or thrown in jail again, but I’m not scared. I’m doing this for my children and grandchildren.

Until next time, C.T. Vivian

Your pal, C.T. Vivian

105

Hold up, wait a minute — what did I just read? Before I was even born, this movement was going on. I had no idea Papa was thrown in jail. This was a lot of information to take in all at once. I couldn’t imagine being beaten, tossed in prison and NOT being scared. I keep reading through the letters, because I want to know what else happened. I learned about the Civil Rights Movement from my family and in school, but it is different reading it from the eyes of someone who lived through it.

Thursday, August 29, 1963 Dear Francesca, Yesterday, I attended a life changing march for racial justice. This march was named “The March on Washington.” It was named the March on Washington because it was held in Washington, D.C., the capitol of our nation. At this march, some major leaders of the civil rights movement spoke. One was my friend that I’ve been telling you about, Martin Luther King Jr. He gave a speech called “I Have a Dream.” In the middle of his speech, Mahalia Jackson called out, “Tell them about your dream, Martin.” That is when Martin went into telling all of his dreams — all of OUR dreams for our children and grandchildren. He went on to tell how he wanted everyone to be equal, and also how he wanted his children to be able to go to the same schools as white kids and have the same rights as everyone else. I was very proud in that moment for what we have done. I even got goose bumps when he spoke. I looked around and saw everyone else as empowered by what Martin was saying as I was. For years, we’ve been trying to spread the word and get people to see life from our shoes. I don’t even know how many times I’ve been arrested, or watched as some of the other activists have been beaten by police or people who are angry at what we are fighting for. I keep thinking about the Freedom Riders and our bus rides throughout Alabama, Mississippi, and other southern states. The idea was to overturn the Jim Crow laws.

I rode side by side with white people to prove we were equal, and we were met with a lot of hatred and violence because of it. In Alliston, Alabama, our bus was even set on fire. I never would have thought that all that pain and all those scary moments would pay off. During Martin’s speech, I knew what a big moment it was. I have a feeling there will be meaning ful change coming to my country soon.

All the best,

106

C.T. Vivian April 4, 1969 Dear Francesca, It’s been a year since Martin was shot and killed. Although it is hard to not be sad, his legacy and our hard work lives on. Just days after James Earl Ray assassinated my dear friend in Memphis, Tennessee, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1968. It legally stopped landlords or someone selling a house from turning down another person based on their color. Although it seems like a blur, other people came out in support of Martin and the nonviolence approach he stood for, too. Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy said he encouraged and supported the nonviolence movement. Then, President Lyndon B. Johnson declared April 7th a national day of mourning in Martin’s honor. Just last month, the man who shot Martin, James Earl Ray, was sentenced to 99 years in prison. I know the future is bright, even though our work is far from over. I will fight for equality until the day I die.

Your pal, C.T. Vivian

It all makes sense now. I mean it did before, but it makes even more now — why Papa is so passionate about equal rights.

His work with the C.T. Vivian Leadership Institute and his love for encouraging everyone to help change the world into a better place is all connected. Papa’s hard work really has changed the lives of people for the better. Even in his older years, Papa has made such a big impact and still is with his fight for equality. Well, I can’t keep stalling forever. I slowly reached for the tape and sealed back up the letters — proud of Papa and even prouder of how hard he fought for my rights.

Looks like I have to get back to my science homework. Sigh. I hate learning about the solar system. Back to you, Saturn and Uranus.

About The Wren’s Nest

By preserving the legacy of Joel Chandler Harris and the heritage of African American folklore through storytelling, tours, and student publishing, the Wren’s Nest serves as an educational resource and entertainment venue for the community, the greater Atlanta area, and visitors from around the globe. A National Historic Landmark, the Wren’s Nest was the Harris family home from 1881 to 1913 when it was established as a House Museum, the oldest in Atlanta. Harris’s career as a newspaper editor at the Atlanta Constitution cemented his reputation as an important Atlantan. His faithful and sly recording of the Brer Rabbit tales established him as one of the most significant American authors of the 19th century and made the stories accessible across the world.

As the historic home of a respected journalist, essayist, novelist, and compiler of the Brer Rabbit stories, the Wren’s Nest serves as a source of history, storytelling, and literary arts for the city of Atlanta. Through regular storytelling at the West End location and throughout various venues in the city, our Ramblers entertain a wide audience with traditional African American folktales. The Wren’s Nest complements the Ramblers with several educational components, most notably a museum tour. The tour provides context, history, and architectural immersion. A pristine example of Victorian architecture and interior, the Wren’s Nest receives thousands of visitors from all over the world annually.

In recent years, the Wren’s Nest has established writing programs for both middle and high school students. Working with a writing mentor, students in our Scribes Program create their own stories, which are published by the Wren’s Nest Publishing Company. The students conduct research, develop a plot, and create characters. In addition to teaching writing skills, fostering relationships between students and professionals, and publishing anthologies of stories written entirely by middle school students, the program encourages students to engage with history and learn about their city.

Several stories from the Scribes Program are included in this collection.

Our high school writing program trains 8-10 students to produce a literary journal. Students must apply and those who are selected come to the Wren’s Nest twice a week over the summer to learn about the publishing industry. They solicit the work of their peers, choose the entries, work with a designer, and lead every aspect of the publication of their journal under the guidance of our Program Director.

Both the Scribes book and the Literary Journal launch at the Decatur Book Festival every year. We just published our eighth literary journal and our fifth book with KIPP STRIVE Academy Middle School. Our second book with Brown Middle School will launch in the spring of 2015.

The Wren’s Nest Board of Directors Sue Gilman, Executive Director Hunter Groton, Chair of the Board Jodi Harris, Vice Chair Jay Camillo, Secretary Frampton Simons, Treasurer Janice Andrews James Bailey Nancy Boardman Handy Johnson Henry Parkman Jeffrey Robinson Stephanie Russell Ken Thomas Marshall Thomas Caroline Wilbert Harold Yudelson

About the Authors

Tyrique Barnett is a student at KIPP STRIVE Academy, a middle school in Atlanta’s West End. Tyrique could eat tacos forever if someone would only let him. When he isn’t thinking of the advanced technology of the future, you can find him listening to Electronic Dance Music (EDM). He wants to “understand the universe” and feels that a career as an astrophysicist will assist him with that.

Nathan Collier was born in Ohio and schooled in Arkansas, but discovered a far and wide love of writing in Atlanta. He has two novellas on Amazon/Kindle and one on iTunes. He currently resides outside Atlanta where he spends his energy transitioning into screenplays and massaging his cinephile roots.

Googie Daniels is studying Interpersonal Relations at Hampshire College. She loves biographies, books, and chocolate. She harbors a lifelong goal of becoming Gonzo the Great from the Muppets and wants to give a shout out to her friends at the AJC Decatur Book Festival!

Jenna Hanes is a senior at Decatur High School, where she participates in the Color Guard, Mock Trial team, Spring Musical, and Quintessential Acapella. She was the Editorin-Chief of the DHS Literary Magazine and worked at Little Shop of Stories for two years. Jenna is proud to publish her third piece for Wren’s Nest Publishing, and she would like to

thank her dog, Lily, for always waking her up at three in the morning, when all of her best ideas occur.

Priya Hemphill is a student at KIPP STRIVE Academy, a middle school in Atlanta’s West End. She aspires to be an actress, singer, and model when she grows up. Her idea of a dream day is eating Chinese food with Beyonce. Priya’s favorite books are The Hunger Games trilogy.

Akbar Imhotep a storyteller, poet, and aspiring novelist, has been affiliated with the Wren’s Nest since September 1985.

He served as Storyteller-in-Residence from 1985-1999 and is currently a member of the Wren’s Nest Ramblers. Organizational affiliations include the National Association of Black Storytellers, Inc., Kuumba Storytellers of Georgia, Capitol City Bank Legacy Builders Toastmasters Club, and the Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc. Wanzie Ivey is a fiction writer and poet. She often writes under the pen name Diedre B. Insatiable. You can visit her blog at www.sumpnlikascribe.blogspot.com. Wanzie comes from a family of published authors and motivational leaders.

She first developed her love for writing around 1st grade and won essay prizes before she was 13. Wanzie is a native Georgia Peach and her favorite things include a good party and quality Mexican cuisine. She loves spending time with her children and family.

Megan McHugh is a University of Georgia graduate with a degree in English and an emphasis in Creative Writing. She wrote the piece “Colors” in The Wren’s Nest’s inaugural literary magazine, Soy Nut Butter. She currently works in Norcross and is steadily pursuing her writing career in-between painting strangers, reading southern ghost stories, and having the self-proclaimed “coolest brother in the world.”

Fletcher Moore is a father and husband, a writer and musician, a programmer of truculent machines, a lone cyclist, an urban hiker, and a devoted collector of adventures, be they his own or those harvested from books. He lives in Atlanta with his dear wife and his two silly children.

Kitti Murray and her husband, Bill, live in a refugee community on the ragged edges of Atlanta, Georgia, that Time magazine called “the most diverse square mile in the nation.”

She is Mom to four sons and three of their wives. She’s Kiki (a much cooler name for Grandmother, almost as cool as her husband’s Grandfather name, Chief) to a growing tribe of grandkids. Decent Writer. Voracious Reader. Slow Distance Runner. Founder of Refuge Coffee Co. (www.refugecoffeeco. com). Visit Kitti’s blog, kittimurray.com.

Lauren Odom is a student at KIPP STRIVE Academy, a middle school in Atlanta’s West End. Given the chance she would eat spaghetti, probably with her dog and grandma, while studying to be a lawyer or neurologist. Lauren would like to travel to the past to meet all of the instrumental people in history who aren’t mentioned in history books, stopping by Ancient Egypt for the sights.

Kalin Thomas loves being a storyteller, and honed her skills as a producer/correspondent for CNN before starting Kalin Thomas Media (www.KalinThomas.com). The award-winning, multimedia journalist has told stories from six continents,

including Antarctica. Her storytelling expertise is in travel and lifestyle profiles, with an emphasis on multiculturalism.

Rachel Vahey currently attends the University of Georgia, working toward an animal science-equine management degree. But really she hopes that becomes an enjoyable side job after making millions on some novel. Personal opinions are not always reflected in what she writes; enjoy deciphering which is what.

Mia Valdez has a Mexican heritage and she’s proud of it too!

News on the street is that her mom makes the best spinach lasagna this side of the Mississippi, which naturally, is Mia’s favorite food. An eighth grader at KIPP STRIVE Academy, Mia plans to be either a doctor or lawyer when she grows up.

Cat Williams is a second-generation native Atlantan and graduate of Emory University. She works as a copywriter at a digital advertising agency and is an enthusiast for crossword puzzles, sour candy, and punk rock.

Molly Yates likes to laugh, swim, and write. She believes that words are humanity’s most powerful weapon, but if we use words wisely, we can achieve anything. She dreams of a world where there is peace, internally and externally.