Bob Barr

City's Theme Didn't Need a Makeover
November 2, 2005

" . . . from the ashes . . . we have raised a brave and beautiful city . . . we have caught the sunshine in the bricks and mortar of our homes . . . "
-Henry Grady, Dec. 22, 1886

" . . . get 'em up, get 'em up, get 'em up, get 'em up, get 'em up, let's go . . . "-musician and film producer Dallas Austin, Oct. 24, 2005

When Henry W. Grady addressed the New England Society of New York three days before Christmas in 1886, as the first Southerner permitted to speak to that body, the excitement with which he characterized his description of "The New South" was immediately transmitted to the assembled audience, and he was interrupted repeatedly with applause. More important, the impact of that speech ushered in a decades-long era of economic and social growth in Atlanta, whose streets still bore the scars of war and of General Sherman's March.

Grady's description of Atlanta as that "brave and beautiful city" laid the foundation for the city's eventual emergence as a world-class metropolis from which we continue to benefit to this day, nearly 120 years later.

Three-quarters of a century after Grady's eloquent address in the Big Apple, as Southern cities from Jackson to Birmingham were falling victim to the backlash developing in opposition to the nascent civil rights movement, Grady's vision of a New South with "not one ignoble prejudice" was being severely tested. Political and business leaders in Southern states and cities were facing a choice - resist change and have it forced upon them; or embrace it and benefit from it. Once again, Atlanta led the way in the right direction.

A coalition of business and community leaders in Atlanta, seeing the violence and unrest that was manifest in many Southern cities, and knowing that many white political and business leaders in other Southern cities were choosing the path of resistance to the growing civil rights movement, knew they, too, had a choice. They could, like many of Grady's Southern colleagues perhaps counseled him before his 1886 speech, take the path of resistance and defiance.

Thankfully, like Grady, those leaders in Atlanta in the early and mid-1960s rejected negativism and chose instead opportunity, optimism and openness. It is no coincidence that Atlanta - not Birmingham or Jackson, Miss. - was the beneficiary of phenomenal quality growth as the transportation, social and business center of the New South throughout the four decades that have followed. Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, not Birmingham's, is the world's busiest, largely because the city's forward-looking leaders in the 1960s recognized that their city would benefit from embracing the civil rights movement, even as other Southern cities resisted.

It was a drive that has few equals in the annals of the growth of America's cities in the 20th century. The partnership between black and white citizens that was and remains the hallmark of Atlanta became the crucible from which the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. rose to accept the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway, in 1964, and from which his visage as Time magazine's "Man of the Year" in 1963 looked out at America.

Atlanta has given America much, and it continues to give much to America and the world. Even though millions upon millions of air travelers grumble about having to pass through Hartsfield-Jackson's long concourses in order to get a flight to anywhere, the fact is they are passing though Atlanta's gateway to the world.

Strange it is then, that our city, which has given so much demonstrable good to the world, and which has so much still to give, should now, after spending a huge sum of money, come up with a "theme" song that smacks of nothing save nearly unintelligible moaning about "atl" and "get 'em up." Surely our city, which Grady saw as a "great and beautiful city," and which remains so to this day, can do better to "market" itself to the world. Surely our city, led by a mayor widely recognized as one of America's best, can develop and present to the world a picture that is at least comprehensible and speaks to something other than "get 'em up, let's go."

As a matter of fact, might not we properly ask, "Why does Atlanta - which has served since its rebirth as a beacon of enlightenment to its sister cities in the South and as a shining example to the entire world of a metropolis combining the best of business and social responsibility - need to spend a large sum of money to market a new theme, when the answer to 'what is Atlanta?' lies clearly before us in our history and our present?"

Former U.S. Rep. Bob Barr is a frequent commentator on political and social issues and the chairman of the American Conservative Union Foundation's 21st Century Center for Privacy and Freedom