When I presented my writing students at the Atlanta campus of the Savannah College of Art and Design with the idea of an issue themed around the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act anniversary for our collaboration with Rough Draft, they were not thrilled, to say the least.
And I get it. For many, the term “civil rights” has been reduced to a myopic, over-simplified story of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and that story often counters the injustices they face on many fronts in their daily lives despite the progress made in the wake of the Civil Rights Act.
Signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on July 3, 1964, the act – introduced into legislation after years of activism and protest from organizations such as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Atlanta Student Movement, and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee – outlawed discrimination based on “race, color, religion, or national origin.”
As we all know, forms of discrimination continue to this day and have seen a resurgence in the last fear years.
In our many discussions thinking about civil rights and Atlanta, students articulated the ways in which they’re tired of the old narratives surrounding civil rights, perhaps because they’ve never been fully realized, perhaps because some of these narratives neglect so much about Atlanta life today.
So, students covered the multitudes of our fair city—the ways the Civil Rights Act of 1964 led to Atlanta’s well-touted cultural diversity, as reflected in our residents who come from around the world and in our proud queer communities. These articles look at how Atlanta has given space for entrepreneurs and activism, as well as the inequities that still exist.
But reporting the articles in this special issue of Rough Draft proved to be step one for these emergent writers—in telling these stories, they’re doing the work to help write Atlanta’s new narratives.
Be sure to visit our special SCAD x Rough Draft section to read the students’ stories which will be posted throughout June.
