Back in the early ’60s, in the early days of the civil rights movement, Atlanta earned a reputation as the City Too Busy to Hate.
To the west and south of the city, black people were suffering from deeply ingrained racism. In Atlanta itself, the economy was booming, and many of the most prominent leaders of the movement came from the city. One of them served three terms as the city’s mayor and now has the busiest airport in the world named after him.
Maynard Jackson was the first mayor of a large Southern city. Andrew Young became U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. And a white man who worked well with black people became the first southern president since the Civil War.
Atlanta became a great city, a city that hosted great sports events, a city that started Georgia toward becoming the biggest film production center outside of Hollywood.
The film industry alone brings nearly $10 billion a year to the Georgia economy, and movies that have nothing to do with Georgia in their stories, movies like Marvel’s “Avengers” series, get made here.
Of course, there are still plenty of Trumpanzees in the state. A few years back, Georgia became one of the states to pass a law making it legal for people to discriminate against LGBTQ+ people. It cruised through the legislature, but before Governor Nathan Deal could sign it, he was informed that Atlanta’s scheduled NCAA men’s basketball Final Four would be cancelled and move somewhere else.
Deal was smart enough to veto the bill. The Final Four was played and so was a later Super Bowl.
But Republicans, especially in the Ear of Trump, are slow learners. They did numerous things to suppress African-Americans from casting their votes.
They stole a gubernatorial election in 2018, with Brian Kemp taking enough black voters off the rolls to give him a victory over Stacey Abrams.
Of course, he created a monster. Abrams spent the next two years working to register voters and turn them out. Joe Biden became the first Democratic presidential candidate in this century to carry Georgia, and Democrats actually defeated two incumbent senators.
Republicans weren’t about to take that sitting down. They immediately introduced horrific changes in voting rules aimed totally at making it harder for black people to vote.
Lots of bad rules, but the worst made it a crime for people to provide snacks or bottled water to people waiting in line for hours to vote.
It passed quickly and Gov. Kemp — with less intelligence than Deal — signed it right away.
Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game, scheduled for this summer in Atlanta, may already be gone.
There will be a lot more blowback.
Republicans really never do learn.