Students learning for the first time about the 1906 Atlanta race riot
For Ramika Gourdine and Sarah Beth McKay -- Atlanta natives and seniors at Grady High, one black and one white -- the subject didn't exist until last year. Then their teacher took them on an eye-opening walking tour of downtown Atlanta, showing them the landmarks of a race riot that had shattered the city a century earlier.
"It was so weird learning that such horrible things happened so close," Gourdine says. "I grew up here, this is part of my history, but I never had any idea about all of this."
McKay adds, "It hit me hard. This city was torn apart, and I had known nothing about it."
That trip led the two students to take on a class project to research the riots. They mapped out the major incidents of the riot, and published a history of the event in the school magazine, Nexus.
"When I first learned about the riot, and walked through the places where it happened, it turned a two-dimensional city into a place with history," McKay says. "One of the most important discoveries was that the way downtown is now set up, how it's segregated with black businesses on Auburn and Decatur, is a direct result of the riot."
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"It was so weird learning that such horrible things happened so close," Gourdine says. "I grew up here, this is part of my history, but I never had any idea about all of this."
McKay adds, "It hit me hard. This city was torn apart, and I had known nothing about it."
That trip led the two students to take on a class project to research the riots. They mapped out the major incidents of the riot, and published a history of the event in the school magazine, Nexus.
"When I first learned about the riot, and walked through the places where it happened, it turned a two-dimensional city into a place with history," McKay says. "One of the most important discoveries was that the way downtown is now set up, how it's segregated with black businesses on Auburn and Decatur, is a direct result of the riot."