Grady High School’s name honors an important man in Atlanta history

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, Henry W. Grady, has been revered as the man whose life’s work lifted the city out of the ashes of the Civil War and the ravages of Reconstruction and into the brave and beautiful city she became.
Historians and journalists have lauded Henry Grady again and again for his ability to sell the city to Northern investors, for his tireless promotion of the city and for colorful speeches in which he painted Atlanta to the nation as the shining example of the New South.
Speaking to the New England Society in New York City in December 1886, Grady repeated comments made earlier by Georgia Sen. Benjamin H. Hill. “There was a South of slavery and secession; that South is dead. There is a South of union and freedom; that South, thank God, is living, breathing, growing every hour.”
In recent years, some, in their ignorance of all this, have attempted to rewrite history and paint Henry Grady as a racist. This slander resulted in the Grady family grave in Atlanta being desecrated a few weeks ago. Anyone who has repeated these fictions about Henry Grady is at least partially responsible.
One quote frequently used in this effort to paint Grady as a racist comes from a book written in the 1940s by a Swedish economist. African-American novelist and National Book Award winner Ralph Ellison had a lot to say about the book. Here is but one quote:
“Gunnar Myrdal’s “An American Dilemma” is not an easy book for an American Negro to review. Not because he might be overawed by its broad comprehensiveness; nor because of the sense of alienation and embarrassment that the book might arouse by reminding him that it is necessary in our democracy for a European scientist to affirm the American Negro’s humanity; not even because it is an implied criticism of his own Negro social scientists’ failure to define the problem as clearly. Instead, it is difficult because the book, as a study of a social ambiguity, is itself so nearly ambiguous that in order to appreciate it fully and yet protect his own humanity, the Negro must, while joining in the chorus of “Yeas” which the book has so deservedly evoked, utter a lusty and simultaneous “Nay.”
Atlanta’s history, like all history, is complicated. But, it is in no way debatable that Atlanta, with a great deal of assistance and leadership from Henry Grady, worked hard to overcome the devastation of the Civil War, to become the “city too busy to hate,” to raise up not only a white middle class but also a Black middle class and to become a mecca for Black people from around the country.
The histories of both Atlanta and the state of Georgia are filled with real racist villains who deserve to be called out. Henry Grady is not and never has been one of those.
Henry Grady is owed a debt of gratitude for what he did for the city. He was a visionary, and Atlanta continues to profit from that vision today. Students and faculty of Grady High School should be proud to honor his memory. It should have been a regular feature of the curriculum for all those lucky enough to attend this great school.