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How Atlanta celebrates its Black political heritage while being consumed by ‘gentrification’: journalist
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How Atlanta celebrates its Black political heritage while being consumed by ‘gentrification’: journalist
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Atlanta is a city that is famous for its civil rights heritage and the achievements of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his allies. Journalist Teresa Wiltz, who grew up partly in Atlanta, discusses that heritage in an article published by Politico on September 16. Now in her early sixties, Wiltz stresses that while Atlanta celebrates its past, it has experienced so much “gentrification” that it is “barely recognizable” to someone who remembers the city as it was during the 1970s and 1980s.
“In 1973, the year I turned 12, in a reverse of the Great Migration, my family moved south, decamping from the virtually all-White environs of Staten Island, New York, for my mom’s hometown, Atlanta,” Wiltz recalls. “To be a Black kid growing up in Atlanta in the ‘70s and ‘80s was to experience a version of America almost ripped from a counter history novel. This was Atlanta as in The ATL, Hotlanta, The A, Wakanda — pick your nomenclature here — post-Civil Rights, Black Power Atlanta.”
Wiltz continues, “Atlanta was ours. Our doctors were Black. Our lawyers were Black. The hardware store owners were Black. Our bankers were Black. Our neighbors were Black. Our swimming teachers and gymnastics coaches were Black. White folks, who lived on the other side of town, had the big money. But in Atlanta, Black folks had the political power. And that meant if White people wanted to get anything done, they had to come correct. At least, that’s how we saw the power dynamics in our then-majority-Black city.”
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The journalist recalls that after living on “lily White Staten Island” as a child, moving to Atlanta at 12 and spending her adolescence there “brought a newfound sense of pride in my identity.”
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