On the Road Again: Atlanta

Blowin’ in the Wind is taking a road trip this summer, jammed on a plane or highway with millions of other Americans.  Unless some news story demands our immediate attention and witty comment, we’ll be making virtual (or real) visits to some interesting American cities. I know I’ll be in Long Beach later this month.  Other travel tips welcome.

Atlanta“Whether you’re going to heaven or hell, you have to change planes in Atlanta.”  I first heard this popular quip years ago when I was trying to fly from Nashville to Chicago and wondered why I had to go south to Atlanta to go north to Chicago. 

Turns out Atlanta’s airport is the busiest in the world, not just the US, but the world, the  most passenger traffic and the most take offs and landings.  Next up on that stat; Beijing, Heathrow, Tokyo and O’Hare.  But Atlanta is far out in front, 95 million passengers per year, going to both heaven and hell.

There’s been a lot of hell in Atlanta’s 175-year history.  Like any southern city, racism, slavery and the Civil War left deep scars; some might say the wounds are still open.  Etched on America’s memory (and memorialized in the iconic Atlanta film, Gone with the Wind) is the 1864 burning of Atlanta followed by General Sherman’s march to the sea.  After a four-month siege, Union forces entered Atlanta, ordered a mandatory evacuation, and burned the city to the ground.  Sherman then, controversially even then, led a 300 mile march of destruction and scorched earth all the way to Savannah, killing or capturing all livestock, burning crops, wrecking railroads and bridges.  One historian wrote “Sherman defied military principles by operating deep within enemy territory and without lines of supply or communication.  He destroyed much of the South’s potential and psychology to wage war.”  While raising Northern morale, the Atlanta conflagration  and scorched Georgia earth fueled Southern attitudes and resentment for decades.

General William Tecumseh ShermanAnother Atlanta hell took place during the 1996 Summer Olympics, when a pipe bomb exploded in crowded Centennial Park, killing one and injuring over 100.  Like Munich, we always associate the Atlanta games with that incident.   We also recall them as the most over the top, blatently commercial Olympics, with Coke (headquartered in Atlanta) and other sponsors seeming to run the show.  Responding to strong international criticism, IOC organizing committee members defended the commercialism as part of America’s “culture of capitalism,” as if Coke were a cute mascot or float at the closing ceremony.

Enough about Atlanta’s hell.  All pretty American – racism, violence, commercialism, sugar.

The heaven in Atlanta is pretty heavenly.  Called “a city too busy to hate,” it was the cradle of the civil rights movement and is now the most progressive city in the south, with a large LGBT community (3^rd in the US after San Francisco and Seatlle), strong colleges and universities (including Morehouse, where Obama spoke a couple weeks ago), the Carter Center home base of Jimmy Carter’s good work, great regional cuisine, an energetic arts scene and a good economy (6^th strongest economy in the US, 15^th in the world.)

I visited Atlanta once (besides the many planes changed at the airport) in 1995 for a national church meeting at the convention center.  As is my wont on business travel I managed to build in a couple days before and after for tourism.  Vivid memories: the impressive High Art Museum, recently doubled in size, the CNN Headquarters (sort of dopey tour actually, gee, that’s the very chair where Soledad O’Brian sits!) and 4^th of July fireworks in Centennial Park (it was the 100^th Olympics, hence Centennial.)  A tremendous worship service with thousands of African American progressives; their church had been recently kicked out of its conservative Baptist denomination when its pastor read the gospel and said a loving God would surely welcome gays; thousands left, but other new folks came, and now the church was and is back up to its original size and more.  Meeting Andrew Young at the church meeting, former mayor of Atlanta, Ambassador to the UN under Jimmy Carter, lieutenant to Martin Luther King Jr., at his side when he was assassinated in Memphis in 1968.

Martin Luther King Historical SiteMost profound memory: the Martin Luther King Historical Monument in his Sweet Auburn neighborhood; within just a couple blocks one can visit his birth and boyhood home, the Ebenezer Baptist Church, where he grew up, preached and where his funeral was held, the MLK Center for Non Violent Social Change, and the Visitors Center with amazing videos of civil rights speeches, sermons, marches, interviews.  Our guide was an elderly woman who had been a friend of King’s.

Some of my church friends tried to drag me that day to a different huge Atlanta tourist favorite, the Coca Cola Museum.  But I’m glad I was able to visit King’s gravesite, which reads, “Free At Last, Thank God Almighty, I’m Free At Last.”

Copyright © 2013 Deborah Streeter