By Frederick A. Hurst

I know I’m not the only one with Georgia on my mind but I do think my perspective on current political events in Georgia might be a bit unique and certainly nostalgic.
Although I was born and raised in Springfield, Massachusetts along with my four siblings, both my grandmother and grandfather on my mother’s side migrated to Springfield from Georgia in the mid 1920s.
As my grandmother described it to me before she passed, my grandfather came North first looking for work and she came later by train with her two oldest boys, Lee and Frederick, my namesake, after my grandfather found work first with the railroad and later as a laborer for the City of Springfield. Their other two kids, Alton and the youngest, Jeanette, my mother, were born in Springfield. Eventually, all of my grandparent’s siblings left Georgia, some for New Jersey, some for New York and Detroit and some, as my grandmother told it, for places unknown.
I remember my grandfather’s heartfelt love for Georgia, which I experienced up front and often because he took me under his wing when I was very young and taught me how to work. Often we would be driving in his half-ton pickup truck to a work site and the song, “Georgia on My Mind,” would play on the radio. My grandfather would sing along and after a while tears would come to his eyes and for a good while afterwards he would gush about his love of Georgia and I always wondered as a kid, if he loved it so much, why did he leave it for a foreign region where he and his family were lost in a sea of White folks?
It took me years before I understood why he left and why so many other Black folks left the Deep South for more accepting parts of the country. The South was really bad for Black folks since the end of Reconstruction. There was no freedom to speak of. They called it “separate but equal” under the law but it could not have been more unequal in education, transportation, financing, voting, jobs and just simple civility in which Black folks had to defer to White folks in almost every regard and do so demonstrably, which is why my grandfather never shed the extreme deferential behavior toward White folks that he had learned in the South was necessary to avoid being lynched. Any place was better for Black folks than the old South…even the North. Yet, every couple of years my grandfather would jump in his pickup truck, take a pocket full of money and go visit his kin in Georgia not daring to stop until he reached his destination. It was like a pilgrimage for him and he would come back renewed and broke and start yearning for Georgia all over again until his next visit.
I was well into my adult years before I visited the Deep South. By the time I was eleven (1955), any effort my grandfather made to convince me to accompany him was squashed with the vicious lynching of the young Emmett Till next door to Georgia in Money, Mississippi. Yet, it was not until recently when I read The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson, that I fully understood the magnitude of the Black exodus from the South which is commonly referred to as the Black Diaspora.
But not everybody left. A substantial number of Black folks remained for any number of reasons and it was in the South where the modern Civil Rights movement was focused, fought and eventually won after many good people suffered and died. And Georgia, along with most of the South, changed for the better for both Black and White folks, so much so that many Black folks returned – some original immigrants and many of their offspring – because the South has become not only hospitable but in many ways, more so than other parts of the country…Georgia especially, where the Black Stacey Abrams came within a whisper of becoming governor, and especially Atlanta, Georgia, which has elected six Black mayors in a row since 1974 and sent the late John Lewis to Congress.
Black folks in the Atlanta community have a history of aiming high. The first Black mayor of Atlanta, Attorney Maynard Jackson, first ran for U.S. Senator in 1968 against seasoned incumbent Herman Tallmadge just three years after the passage of the Voting Rights Act. He lost but made a name for himself in Atlanta where he won a majority of the votes. He eventually ran for mayor in 1973 at 35 years old and defeated a White incumbent by winning 60% of the votes in a city in which Black folks were still in the minority just as Stacey Abrams came so close in 2018 to winning the governorship in a state that is still minority Black.
Part of Maynard’s success came from his ability to work with the White business community and one of his major successes was in promoting minority business participation. He was also supported by an organized Black professional community and by the grassroots Black community with its strong middle class. He also was able to command a strong White vote. And the five Black mayors who followed him – one of the five was Maynard Jackson himself who served another term after his first successor, Andrew Young – up to the current Keisha Bottoms, have followed the same prescription although Atlanta is now majority Black.
My grandfather, Fred King, would be so proud at the evolution of the place he loved so much. I envision him in heaven shedding a tear or two while puffing out his chest at the angels. And he would be elated to see Georgia, in its January 5th special election, send two Democratic Senators to Washington – one Black one White – to wrench control of the Senate from Mitch McConnell and others who embrace the ugly past that America has worked so hard to escape. I can envision the angels scrambling out of his way as he lets out his typical loud and hearty laughter and exclaiming, hello! and in jest bringing down his calloused, work-hardened hand full force on the shoulder or back of the one closest to him as his way of expressing his appreciation for the magnificent evolution of the Georgia he loved so much and the significant role Black Georgia voters played in electing Joe Biden president at a time when the nation and the world needed him the most.
So now you might understand why, in memory of my late grandfather, to whom I owe so much, I have Georgia on my mind in a slightly different way than most. ■