Following the 2015 shooting in a Black church perpetrated by a white supremacist and the deadly 2017 “Unite the Right” white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, VA., the Athens Anti-Discrimination Movement (AADM) pushed for the removal of Confederate symbols for discussion in Athens.
On August 16, 2017, the AADM hosted a public forum for concerned Athenians to express their raw feelings about the removal of Confederate monuments and the need to to fight the disturbing rise of hate groups. Over 200 families, community leaders, and activists shared their feelings and opinions, as well as listened to those with opposing views. Following this forum, the AADM released an open letter to the Athens Mayor & Commission calling for the relocation of the Confederate Soldiers Memorial from downtown Athens to a cemetery where Confederate soldiers and their families were buried. We believed that doing so would remove a symbol of racism and hate from Athens’ cultural landscape, while still providing those who placed sentimental value on the monument the chance to continue to visit it. We subsequently sent out a Call to Action for our allies to rally at Athens’ City Hall during Mayor & Commission meetings and hosted several discussions around race, symbols of the Confederacy, and the importance of a city to embody diversity and inclusion.
In June 2020, after years of advocacy around , the Athens Mayor & Commission approved the removal of the Confederate Soldiers Memorial.
But our work was not over.
Once it was announced that the entire block that the monument occupied would be repurposed, the AADM sprang into action to collect the community’s feelings on what should go there. In July 2020, the AADM rallied to ‘reclaim our space’ at the UGA Arch and promoted a community survey on how Athens could reimagine the downtown intersection of College Avenue and Broad Street to be racially inclusive, relevant to the community’s culture, and more accessible. We continued to collect opinions before launching a Design Cypher, or interactive brainstorming event in March 2021. The Cypher was organized to showcase the ideas that the community had come up with, including highlighting Athens’ diverse musical and artistic landscape, honoring the Native American groups that the land had been stripped from centuries before, including public restrooms, and making the space more handicap accessible. Community members walked from display to display and voted on the idea they wanted to see the most.
Shortly after the votes from the Design Cypher were tallied, all were presented to Athens’ Mayor & Commission. As of today, there has been no attempt by Athens’ local government to make what is now called the “Pedestrian Plaza” more racially inclusive or accessible.
Not deterred by our local government’s unwillingness to make those inclusive changes and honor the contributions of Athens’ Black and Brown communities, the AADM strives to do so by regularly hosting the Athens Black Market. The Athens Black Market is designed to support minority business owners and provide a marketplace atmosphere while promoting culture and diversity in downtown Athens. Food, music, art, jewelry, clothing, and much more crafted by local Black and Brown people fill the closed off section of College Avenue overlooking the spot where the Confederate Soldiers Monument once stood. While the Athens Black Markets are designed to provide fun to the whole family, it also serves as a statement: Athens is diverse and its landscape should reflect that; we’re not going anywhere.
For inquiries regarding the Athens Black Market, please contact Knowa D. Johnson at 678-740-6884.