![]() The city covered the costs of cleaning and repairing the damaged homes, at least one of which was flooded with several inches of sewage, as the city’s failure to upgrade the system had caused the overspills. In 2012, a series of storms resulted in severe flooding on Washington’s block, as runoff rainwater overwhelmed a combined water and sewage system built beneath it and caused a major overspill. Signs in the front garden of one of the homes still standing on the block “Stop predatory use of eminent domain,” is printed onto another. “Mayor Bottoms, stop displacing Black families,” one of the signs reads, referring to Atlanta’s current mayor, Keisha Lance Bottoms. Its numerous Black-owned businesses and its strong Black middle and upper class have earned the city the title of America’s “Black Mecca”.īut this carefully constructed image clashes sharply with the bright red signs staked into the lawns on Washington’s block, where just four homes remain where once at least two dozen had stood. The city celebrates itself as home to scores of civil rights leaders, including Martin Luther King Jr and John Lewis. In 1974, Atlanta became the first major southern city to elect an African American mayor, and every mayor since has been African American. But while it arrived later than in other parts of the city, when gentrification came, it came with force. Peoplestown is one of the last historically Black neighbourhoods to be targeted for gentrification in Atlanta, which has one of highest rates of income inequality in the US and was the fourth-fastest gentrifying city in the country between 20. It is a process of gentrification that has already transformed the city of Atlanta – and major cities across the US – intertwining with unresolved racial injustices built into the country’s foundations and resulting in mass displacement of low-income and Black residents. New houses where the old church once stood The whole environment of the neighbourhood is completely different now,” Washington says. The newcomers trickling into Peoplestown to settle in these properties are more affluent, and often whiter, than the mostly working-class residents who lived in the neighbourhood for many decades. ![]() It was not an unusual sight in a neighbourhood where at least every other home has been sold off, renovated or demolished and replaced with a larger, more expensive house. ![]() Washington watched as the church was demolished and residential homes were built in its place. The pews were moved out onto the lawn, from where they were sold, one by one. The songs that spilled into Washington’s bedroom with the sunshine each Sunday morning have been replaced with silence.Ībout two years ago, the church’s owners sold the building to private realtors, who, driven by the city’s development plans, have targeted Peoplestown over the past few years. I thought how incredible it was that I got to wake up and listen to this every Sunday morning.”īut the scene she describes bears no resemblance to the cookie-cutter suburban houses that now sit across the street, where the old church once stood. She chuckles at this memory of a neighbourhood that quickly became her home. “I was thinking ‘What is going on?’ I thought maybe the Lord was calling me home maybe I died and didn’t even realise it.” Tanya Washington’s 100-year-old home “On Sunday morning when I woke up, I heard the sounds of old spirituals like my grandmother used to sing in her choir when I would visit her in South Georgia,” the 50-year-old recalls. A television plays muted footage of Black Lives Matter protests in the city book-lined shelves add cosiness to the room decorated with framed family portraits on the blue walls. ![]() She is sitting in the living room of her 100-year-old home, where she lives with her husband and two children, aged four and 18. Keep reading list of 4 items list 1 of 4 Still Here: A story of incarceration and gentrification in the US list 2 of 4 The weight and pressure of American racism list 3 of 4 Moment of Reckoning: Racism and Police in America list 4 of 4 An American lynching: ‘I could hear their screams’ end of list
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