Grady Alumni weigh in on possible name change

Dear friends and fellow Grady-ites. I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to be writing once again for The Southerner for the first time since I was a humor columnist back in 1959 — or what is now considered prehistoric times — before graduating to national and international publications. But my subject today is far from humorous, for it seriously involves us all: the name by which our school...

In an effort to convey my thoughts, I found myself stuck between what I know to be true and attempting to understand someone’s miseducation of race history. What we’ve been conditioned to accept are the small reminders of our ugly past, reminders hiding behind street designations, pictures on dollar bills, school names. Those who don’t understand this only see their memories and emotional...

How easy it is to type something into Google and find answers quickly. How easy it is to slap a label on someone and watch it be repeated until it becomes “fact,” whether or not it is really a fact? How easy it is to subscribe to conspiracy theories without ever doing the research to find the truth? For more than a century, the great orator, editor and progressive champion of all things Atlanta,...

“The supremacy of the white race of the South must be maintained forever and the domination of the negro race resisted at all points and at all hazards — because the White race is the superior race . . .” -Henry W. Grady (1888) These are among the first words I read while conducting research on my high school’s namesake in 2003. I wanted the name to change right then, and I regret not making...