Economist.com Cities Guide: Atlanta Briefing - July 2006

News this month

Convict Campbell

On June 13th a federal judge sentenced Bill Campbell, Atlanta's mayor from 1994 to 2002, to 2½ years in prison. He was also fined $6,300 and ordered to repay more than $62,000 in back taxes. Mr Campbell was convicted in March of tax evasion during his tenure as mayor. But he was acquitted of corruption, having been charged with taking cash bribes for city contracts and spending the money on gambling and trips to Paris with his mistress. A seven-year federal investigation of Mr Campbell’s administration has helped convict ten of the former mayor’s subordinates. Mr Campbell, who is appealing against the sentence, has yet to turn himself in. But it seems likely that he will serve the time in jail, albeit in a facility close to the home he shares with his wife in Florida.

Atlantans are divided over the former mayor's legacy. Some politicians, including Bob Holmes, a Democratic state representative, have praised Mr Campbell for presiding over a period of strong economic growth and hosting the Olympic Games in 1996. But Shirley Franklin, who succeeded Mr Campbell as mayor in 2002, said she was surprised her predecessor did not express any remorse over his apparent mishandling of the city's finances.

A Reed in the wind

With the primaries for Georgia’s governorship looming on July 18th, Ralph Reed, a Republican candidate for lieutenant-governor, is floundering. In Georgia, the offices of governor and lieutenant-governor are elected separately. Sonny Perdue, the current governor, is expected to win the Republican nomination with ease; the lieutenant-governor’s race is a much closer call. On June 23rd the Senate Indian Affairs Committee revealed that in the late 1990s Mr Reed received $5.3m from an organisation run by Jack Abramoff, a disgraced lobbyist at the centre of a federal investigation. Mr Reed, a former head of the Christian Coalition, a conservative lobbying group, has not been charged with a crime, but is alleged to have taken the money to lobby against casinos that would have competed with Mr Abramoff’s clients.

This was good news for Casey Cagle, who is vying with Mr Reed for the Republican nomination. The contest between the two has turned nasty, with each candidate attacking the other in television advertisements. Mr Reed has accused Mr Cagle of supporting eminent domain, while Mr Cagle has highlighted Mr Reed's connections with Enron. In Georgia, a conservative state, the stakes in the Republican primary are high because whoever triumphs is expected to beat the Democratic candidate for the job.

Fit for a king

The city of Atlanta has agreed to pay $32m for the papers of Martin Luther King. The collection, comprising over 10,000 notes, letters and drafts of speeches (including an early version of his famous “I have a dream” speech), will be housed at Morehouse College, King’s alma mater, and eventually become the centrepiece of a planned civil-rights museum. King grew up in Atlanta and was, like his father, a preacher at Ebenezer Baptist Church on Auburn Avenue.

King’s four children—Martin Luther III, Dexter, Yolanda and Bernice—had planned to auction the papers on June 30th. But the collection was saved for the city after Shirley Franklin, Atlanta’s mayor, scraped together enough short-term financing to secure the papers. Several Atlanta-based companies, including Delta Airlines and Coca-Cola, have promised to help pay the bill.

Some observers have criticised the King children for trying to profit from their father’s work—two of them once drew six-figure salaries from the King Centre, a museum founded by King’s late wife, Coretta Scott King. But Ms Franklin rose to their defence: “Dr King copyrighted his own work,” she told reporters, “so he expected that it would have value and expected it would be part of the legacy.”

The shock of the newer

Atlanta’s modernist buildings are facing the wrecking ball as a wave of development transforms the city. Modernist architecture, known for its emphasis on clean lines, industrial materials and form-follows-function aesthetic, grew popular in Atlanta in the 1950s, when the city was becoming the region’s business hub. The Equitable Building, completed in 1968, is probably Atlanta's best-known modernist structure and is in no danger of destruction. But lesser-known buildings are not expected to survive growing demand for new condominiums and office space. The former First National Bank of Atlanta at 615 Peachtree, the city’s largest example of modernism, is scheduled for demolition this summer. It will be replaced by a 30-storey mixed-use tower, to be named Fox Plaza.

Many are now looking to protect Atlanta’s modernist buildings. The Georgia chapter of DOCOMOMO, an international architecture advocacy group, has been working to deflect threats to local modernist structures, even unloved ones such as the Atlanta Constitution building, which no longer houses the newspaper it was named after and has been slated for demolition since 1995. There have been encouraging signs of progress: a bank building on Monroe Drive, built in 1965, is enjoying new life as PieBar, a chic pizzeria, and a campaign is underway to save Paschal’s Restaurant, once a meeting place for civil-rights leaders.

Harry Potter and the Unhappy Mum

It is said that children suffer from the corrupting influences of television, video games and the internet. But Harry Potter? Laura Mallory, a mother from Loganville, a town east of Atlanta, has demanded the removal of the popular “Harry Potter” books from her children’s elementary school, on the grounds that the bespectacled young hero promotes witchcraft. The Gwinnett school board and a panel comprising teachers and parents voted to keep the books, but Ms Mallory is appealing against the decision to the state board of education, which will debate the issue publicly in October. She may be appeased when the seventh and last Harry Potter book is published: J.K. Rowling, their author, has hinted that Harry might die in the series' final volume.

Catch if you can

July 2006

National Black Arts Festival

July 14th-23rd 2006

Now in its 19th year, the National Black Arts Festival (NBAF) has become one of the country’s biggest celebrations of African-American art and culture. The festival’s clout ensures that its events, which include dance, music, literature, art and film, are peppered with big names. This year Maya Angelou, a writer, performs a one-woman show based on W.E.B. DuBois’s “The Souls of Black Folk”; Charlayne Hunter-Gault, a journalist (and the first black woman admitted to the University of Georgia), and Pearl Cleage, a poet and playwright, discuss Africa and creativity; and Phylicia Rashad and T.C. Carson, both actors, lead a series of readings to honour August Wilson, a Pulitzer-prize winning playwright who chronicled the African-American experience.

This year’s festival also includes a series of African films, exhibits at the High Museum of Art and the Carter Centre, a “Gospel and Soul Fest”, and two art markets, at Greenbriar Mall in DeKalb County and at Atlantic Station.

Various venues. For more information and a schedule of events, see the festival’s website.

More from the Atlanta cultural calendar