Tag: Georgia

Several Places at Once

Several Places at Once

Malinda Maynor Lowery
Reading Foxfire

Reading Foxfire

Jessica Wilkerson, illustrations by Becca Stadtlander
Hearing Waycross

Hearing Waycross

Abigail Greenbaum, illustrations by Phil Blank

In this piece, a longtime Gram Parsons fan grows suspicious of the myths that surround the singer's life and music. A visit to Waycross, Georgia; interviews with people connected to Parsons's South Georgia childhood; and investigations of the area's musical, industrial, and socioeconomic histories reveal whose stories are heard and whose are silenced by such myths. The piece explores how one might hear the oppressive structures that echo in the music, such as the exploitation of Black laborers, the anti-Black violence of the region, the deforestation of South Georgia's longleaf grassland, and the impact of that ecological harm on Black and white family farmers.

The Lake and the Landfill

The Lake and the Landfill

Hannah S. Palmer, illustrations by Nate Beaty

The mysterious Lake Charlotte Nature Preserve in Atlanta is no longer a lake, nor a nature preserve, but a private two hundred–acre wilderness next to a landfill. This former public lake has a long and complicated history, including a suburban fishing club, a tragic debutante, botched plans for an inner-city campground, dumped bodies, and a landfill thwarted by organized Black neighbors. How did this once prized destination end up preserved in a state of arrested development? In 2019, as the landfills are capped and this corner of Atlanta begins to gentrify, the city considers whether to preserve Lake Charlotte again. In this personal essay, the author creeps through the fence to see what's left of the lake, the dam, and the Paleolithic quarry sites. Can Atlanta overcome a development pattern that paired neighborhoods for "Negro expansion" with industrial contamination? Fenced off for forty years, can nature—and the community—repair itself?

Grant Park, Atlanta

Grant Park, Atlanta

Steve Gallo

This article examines the role that Atlanta's Grant Park (1883) played in promoting the idea of social continuity between the Old and New Souths in the final decades of the nineteenth century. By the 1880s, Atlanta's leaders successfully leveraged their city's quick recovery from the Civil War to present it as an exemplar of New South success that would lead the region into an era of prosperity. As they did, they simultaneously sought to reassure white citizens that the march into the future did not require them to abandon their cultural attachment to the romanticized Old South. Consequently, they simulated the purported environmental and social conditions of the antebellum period within the grounds of Grant Park in order to reassure white Atlantans that central tenets of antebellum society would be maintained amid the push for modernization. The result was a space that privileged a conception of southern identity premised on white supremacy and patriarchal control above all others and codified social difference within the landscape.

“No, You’re Not Going to Shut Me Up”

“No, You’re Not Going to Shut Me Up”

Renitta Shannon and Cynthia R. Greenlee, with illustrations by Jane Mount
To Belong Aquí y Allá

To Belong Aquí y Allá

Maggie Loredo
Carving A Path For Those Who Will Follow

Carving A Path For Those Who Will Follow

Stacey Abrams, in conversation with Valerie Boyd
Things That Don’t Fit

Things That Don’t Fit

Joseph Crespino
Replaying a Useful South

Replaying a Useful South

Lauren Pilcher
From Georgia Peach to Art Historian

From Georgia Peach to Art Historian

Gail Levin
Georgia’s Wild Oyster Harvest

Georgia’s Wild Oyster Harvest

Essay and photos by André Gallant