Virginia Prescott: It s
Georgia Today. I m Virginia Prescott, in for Steve Fennessy. As the nation celebrates Black History Month, we re taking you back to an often-overlooked chapter in Georgia s civil rights history. Before the Selma to Montgomery march, before the “I Have a Dream” speech, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was sentenced to four months of hard labor for an outstanding traffic violation. It s October 1960, just weeks before Election Day. Dr. King is arrested for taking part in a lunch counter sit-in at Rich s department store in Atlanta. He was then transferred to DeKalb County, sentenced, jailed and then taken in the dead of night to a Georgia state prison. Thanks to some back-channel, even rogue moves by the Kennedy campaign, Dr. King was released.
It was a different world. An ice cream parlor, schools, restaurants, a park, all were full of family and friends and people that looked like her. African Americans on the Westside had their own swimming pool, their own playground, and, when the Ashby was built in 1934, their own movie theater.
You could, if you wanted, travel to the Fox, on Peachtree Street, and walk up a few hundred steps on the fire escape outside the building, and sit in the “Buzzard’s Roost,” which was reserved for “colored” patrons.
“But that was not my cup of tea,” said Stemley, now 79 and a retired high school counselor.
Theater of our own: The Ashby brought film to Black viewers sfgate.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from sfgate.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The Unfulfilled Promise of Julian Bond
How could someone so telegenic, so witty, and skilled in politics have missed out on higher office?
James Palmer/AP/Shutterstock
Three years before he died at 75 in 2015, Julian Bond sat down for an interview on his life and work. Asked how he would like to be remembered, Bond replied, with his characteristic alloy of amiable candor and laconic wit:
I want a double-sided headstone. On one side, I want it to say, “Race Man” and that means a man who doesn’t dislike other races, but who’s proud of his own and wants to lift it up. The other side is going to say, “Easily Amused.”