A Evening in Atlanta, GA
My data collection training took me to Atlanta, Georgia this last week. I had never been there. In my limited free time I planned to take public transport into the city and do some walking around.
I would head to the National Historical Park there that includes the birthplace of Martin Luther King, the neighborhood where he lived and worked, and the tomb that became his final resting place.
I knew I didn’t have enough time to do Atlanta justice. I wouldn’t even be able to do justice to the National Historical Site that I would visit, but I could at least find my way there and back to the hotel. I knew Atlanta had a rich history of Black Leadership and I wanted to absorb a little of it through my pores.
Riding public transport would give me a feel for the city, especially since a lot of the MARTA (Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority) traveled overground. It was a 30 minute walk from the hotel through College Park to get from my hotel near the airport where the training was held to the nearest station.
It started to rain. I almost stopped to eat in one of the many lovely looking restaurants I passed on my way to the station. It seemed to me to be unexpectedly vibrant amount of food choices right there around the airport in what seemed to me an industrial strip.
Despite the rain, I persevered. Found the station. Figured out how to pay for it. The tracks run north to the center of the city and the walk from there was to the east, just a few blocks into the Old Fourth Ward.
And it continued raining. I stopped at a liquor store to pick up a can of beer to bring back to my hotel. Followed my map through the downtown streets and beneath the highway into the old neighborhood. There weren’t a lot of people around and like many old neighborhoods, there was no good walking plan to get into it as far as I could tell. I took a few pictures and videos of the eternal flame near the tomb where Martin Luther King is interred. And then found a place nearby called Edgewood Pizza and had the “King Slice.” I chose pizza over the Slutty Vegan restaurant next door, which looked to be good too because people were lined up out the door, but in the end was too busy and I chose not to wait.
After, I ordered a Lyft to take me back to the hotel.
Plan for next time: Take a little longer to also go to the National Center for Civil Rights. Note to my future self, don’t worry so much, stay and walk a little longer. What can I say, I was anxious to get back and get prepared for training the next morning.
My training was to prepare for HS&B, the study I will be collecting data for this fall. This study will take place across the country in all sorts of schools. Therefore my fellow data collectors are from all over themselves. There are 920 high schools involved and about 24,700 9th graders will be interviewed this first data collection period. The study will follow them to 12th grade and then on to their adult life to see what factors contribute to their self-identified success.
In my last experience of data collection I was moving between city middle schools to small country middle schools and I expect I will again get to travel to outstate schools with this study. I like to do it because it mirrors my lifetime of traveling between city, small town and country.
That divide between city and country interests me. There is much distrust between the two and in fact we need each other. Life is hard for a lot of folks here in Minneapolis right now. You see it in the streets. Struggle was apparent in Atlanta as well. But I don’t think it is much better outstate, just a lot less visible. And that is where I started with all this, the eyes with which with we look upon things matter.
On November 12, 1961 Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. visited Mankato. He gave two sermons at Centenary United Methodist Church and a speech at Mankato High School. Just at the end of the Freedom Rides. He visited that high school before mom had yet arrived to high school from her single room school house, but she was soon to be in the room where that happened. Who knows who of her people was in that room? That speech that MLK gave was standing room only. He was willing to go wherever the message needed to go and he wanted people to care about the future we are creating together. He told that crowd: We live in an interconnected world. We must confront white supremacy head on. And find creative ways to protest.
His words were often poetry, “Hate destroys the hater as well as the hated.”
That brings me back to the Pema Chodron quote on patience that I include below.
Time is moving quickly these days.
And yet there is a lot of time.
Patience to me is like meditation, taking the time to sit with and look at the things we don’t want to see. But there are so many ways to look at things and the state of your eyes matter.
I believe Jesus had the eye of love.
As did Martin Luther King.
Thich Nhat Hanh.
Loving in the face of hate is a powerful act and it takes a lot of energy.
And often times the lover is the hated one and will be the one that is destroyed.
Although Martin Luther King was killed — they attempted to destroy him, he still create, and it increases exponentially because of what he set in motion.
The loss of him was huge and yet he had already done so much he could never die.
Thanks to all that support this work.
Patience is an enormously supportive and even magical practice. It’s a way of completely shifting the fundamental human habit of trying to resolve things by either going to the right or the left, labeling things “good” or labeling them “bad.” It’s the way to develop fearlessness, the way to contact the seeds of war and the seeds of lasting peace—and to decide which ones we want to nurture.
--Pema Chodron
More soon.
Much love, Tina
Tina, this is a lovely post about important reminders. I needed those reminders today.
BTW: Greg and I watched a documentary (Rumble on Netflix) last night about the influence of indigenous people on American rock. Many of the influences that we think of as African American were here long before colonization. I learned so much history that I didn’t know before and better understanding of what has been done is the path to King’s Dream. I think that you and Josh would both like it.