Back in black

13/06/08 13:12
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So, we are back in Atlanta where we started out three months ago. Back then, a hurricane had just blown off the roof of the CNN building, and knocked out windows in most major skyscrapers. Streets were cordoned off all over downtown, and the sound of breaking glass provided an ever-present and slightly disturbing soundtrack. Now, the temperature has climbed some 20º F, the shards have been swept off the streets, and the people are back - in black. The hometown of Martin Luther King is still very much an African-American city, and often we find ourselves in places where we are the only Caucasians around. It is definitely a worthwhile reality check on a journey in which our many hosts have been almost exclusively white.

Today, downtown was teeming with people buying and selling and preaching - and just plain hanging out. We can go people-wathcing in the shopping arcades of Underground Atlanta where guys and girls show off the latest in baggy and slimfit streetwear, we can circle the streets around the courthouse where teenage hoodlums offer crack cocaine to any passer-by without a uniform, or we can kick back on the lawns of Woodruff Park where self-proclaimed preachers read the words of the Lord from leather-bound bibles old and torn. And almost everybody will be as black and American as we are white and foreign. Race has been part of their consciousness from Civil War to Civil Rights, and with Barack Obama as the newly elected presidential candidate for the Democrat Party, it remains very much so.

Still, Atlanta is as welcoming as ever. The Marta metro trains retain that wonderfully rounded bright-orange-and-creamy-brown 70s feel to them, and the southern drawl continues to make art of pronounciation, constantly tempting you to ask people to repeat themselves just to hear their sweetly singing voices one more time around. And so we could not help but listen to Homeless Joe II as he told his story over and over again. We met Homeless Joe I down here three months ago, and we have been regretting not getting his story ever since. But now we finally have it. Black on white. Delivered in good, brotherly spirits. Ours, and ready for the telling.

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