Nneka M. Okona | for the Chicago Tribune
I used to be born in Atlanta through the night hours on a Friday in late May. Days later, my dad and mom introduced me house, house to Stone Mountain. Since then, I’ve begrudgingly referred to as this Atlanta suburb, born of pink clay and granite, mine.
From my hometown, the 825-foot-tall quartz monadnock for which our metropolis is known as looms within the distance, seen from most anyplace. Its presence follows us as we run errands, lounge in outside areas, or take out the trash within the evenings.
Others have staked their very own declare on Stone Mountain. Before roads had been constructed, Indigenous individuals hiked to the summit, bowing to the dawn within the mornings and the sunsets as night referred to as.
This rock meant one thing else earlier than the reborn Ku Klux Klan set a cross ablaze on the summit in 1915 the evening of Thanksgiving, reigniting its agenda to sow seeds of violence, destruction, bigotry and discord. It grew to become a sacred place to many Klansmen, who owned the land and as just lately as 2017 petitioned to burn a cross atop the mount. When Georgia took over the park in 1958, the Klan’s ties to the rock had been formally severed. But the stain of what had already been completed — the degradation and unfettered hatred — was cemented.
Venture into Stone Mountain Park — the most-visited vacationer website in Georgia — and also you’ll get a better glimpse of the face of the mountain, upon which Confederate leaders Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson are carved. It took 57 years and 4 lead sculptors to complete the venture, which was fraught with disagreements and funding points. As it’s, this tribute to the Confederacy is the biggest, unmovable monument of its kind on the planet.
And but, households collect in entrance of the mountain on weekends, sprawled out on the plush Memorial Lawn with blankets and coolers, engaged in video games and leisure coupled with cognitive dissonance. The significance is loud and eternally silenced.
Life within the suburbs of Atlanta crawls. Leaf blowers and garden mowers compete for consideration in a cacophonous refrain early on weekend mornings and evenings as nightfall settles into the skies, urging crickets to screech their allegiance to darkness. As a toddler, I plotted my approach out of this house, promising myself that after I lastly left, I’d not look again. I’d not return. I’d not combat to be rooted the place all of it started.
But house all the time calls. Even after leaving for school and later, leaving the nation for a Spanish journey instructing English, I discovered my approach again to Stone Mountain, seeking to the land that burdened and annoyed me for a contemporary begin. Within the identical time I used to be discovering my new rhythm again within the South, my hometown has been discovering its approach, too, turning into someplace stunning regardless of its previous.
This second of reflection got here with the approaching sixtieth anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famend “I Have a Dream” speech, which he gave Aug. 28, 1963. On that day, as he regarded down from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, he noticed a horde of Black individuals ready for his phrases. They had been ready to be moved, inspired, to really feel some type of validation that their efforts for equality weren’t in useless.
And as he spoke his now often-called-upon phrases, mesmerizing and provoking the group, he invoked a little bit of house for me — he referred to as to “let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia,” eternally memorializing the complexities of this metropolis and the repute that usually precedes it.
People like me, a Black girl from Stone Mountain, don’t really feel the necessity to replicate upon the ugly historical past. But we all know it intimately, with out blinking and with out hesitation.
And but, there’s one other story we cling to: one in every of resilience, of rebuilding, of taking what’s damaged and utilizing the shards to create one thing unprecedented and superb.
This is the story I need to inform.
To get to the highest of Stone Mountain, a 1-mile hike or gondola trip are your choices. On a transparent day, you’ll be able to see the north Georgia mountains and elements of Tennessee on the ascent. As the wind blows in docile gusts, the serenity connects you to how monumental this rock’s existence is as a sacred gathering place in nature.
Travel alongside a strolling path from Stone Mountain Park, and also you’ll attain Stone Mountain Village, usually touted as “downtown” by residents. Humming within the shadows of Stone Mountain Park with an sudden vibrancy, the newly invigorated Main Street hall is proof of what can occur once we transfer past the ugly underbellies of historical past and create a pathway for all — and, particularly, Black individuals — to flourish.
Throughout my youth, what lined Main Street was forgettable. Stone Mountain Village was not someplace most people, residents or not, wished to spend any prolonged period of time. I bear in mind a funnel cake restaurant and a pizza joint with first rate slices. I all the time puzzled what it might be if somebody cared sufficient, and lately I’ve had the glory of watching that potential unfold, with Black entrepreneurs main the way in which.
At 5329 Mimosa Drive, you’ll discover Gilly Brew Bar. Daniel Brown opened his cafe in 2018, within the metropolis’s oldest present constructing and once-home of Stone Mountain’s first mayor. The stately white home was constructed by enslaved Africans round 1834, and the city’s borders had been based mostly across the mayoral residence.
When you stroll contained in the stuccoed constructing, the floorboards creak underneath your toes, a reminder of the tales and lives that performed out over almost 200 years. In that point, it served as a resort, a Civil War hospital, and a restaurant. As Gilly Brew Bar, the within cafe and outside verandas preserve a gentle circulate of individuals working from their laptops or assembly associates for energetic conversations.
Meander 5 minutes north and also you’ll discover The Vibrary, 970 Main St., a mixture wine-and-book bar helmed by proprietor Candace Walker. A longtime wine aficionado, she sought to create an area for fellow lovers to assemble, and opened the area in 2021.
“Given the area’s history and that a Black woman-owned business was not welcomed during that time, being a part of its revitalization is important to me,” she stated. “I want to help others experience the same nostalgia and connection to the community that I have.”
For Black individuals and Black households like mine, our full, wealthy tales are misplaced within the Stone Mountain historical past books. The assumption is that solely racism thrived right here when actually, we took root and constructed group regardless of it. And we nonetheless stay.
Better nonetheless: We thrive. We embrace a metropolis as soon as mired in gore and worry, and discover it reaching out its arms again to us. Instead of the suburban suffocation of my childhood, I’m stunned to search out myself respiration deep, drawn to spending lengthy stretches of time in a downtown the place, for the primary time, I actually really feel at house.
Sixty years later, that is what King’s dream was about. Stone Mountain was one of many first cities the place Union Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman laid waste on his March to the Sea, thought of instrumental in bringing concerning the finish of the Civil War. He wrangled this metropolis and destroyed the railroad tracks as he scorched the earth in petulant rage, nevertheless it regrew into a spot the place Black individuals felt inspired to begin anew.
For locations resembling The Vibrary and Gilly Brew Bar to be hubs of enjoyable, enjoyment and group is the success of greater than desires; it’s our inheritance, it’s the final comfort, it’s a sure peace.
This place is ours to name house. And all the time has been, even when we didn’t all the time notice it. As you stroll by Main Street, you’ll cross the Freedom Bell on the coronary heart of city. It commemorates King’s speech and that promise of freedom.
The legacy of Stone Mountain belongs to us, too, and we will, forevermore, let freedom ring right here, proper at house.
Sweet Potato Cafe: Sweet potato-centric restaurant with soul meals, salads and soups. 5377 Manor Drive, thesweetpotatocafe.web
Weeyums Philly Style: Philadelphia-style cheesesteaks and hoagies, wings and salads. 900 Main St., weeyums.com
Freedom Bell: Monument in tribute to “I Have A Dream” speech. Dedicated in 2000. 922 Main St.
Nneka M. Okona is a contract author.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”