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Friday, March 28, 2008
Not Nice? A Brit in Atlanta begs to differ.
Travel writer Nigel Richardson wrote about his visit to Atlanta in today’s London Telegraph newspaper.
He started the article this way: “The concierge in the Sheraton Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia, wasn’t happy about our walking to Auburn Avenue, less than a mile away.
“It’s not a nice area,” he said, recommending a taxi. Under the Atlanta Expressway we hurried, and were duly accosted - by a tiny old lady in sun hat and popsocks, sitting at a bus stop. “Good mornin’,” she said. “Y’all have a great day now.”
“Not a nice area? This eastern neighborhood of Downtown Atlanta, known as the Old Fourth Ward, just happens to have produced two of the great figures of modern American history — Margaret Mitchell and Martin Luther King Jr.”
Richardson said it feels incongruous to put them in the same paragraph: the black civil rights activist who was assassinated by a white racist in 1968, and the white author of a novel in which black Americans are depicted in ways that make us wince today.
He goes on to describe his visit to Atlanta’s Auburn Avenue area. He lists as “must-sees” the Martin Luther King National Historic Site and the Margaret Mitchell House and Museum.
All in all, sounds like he had a great trip.
