In Deborah Brown’s family lore, the American South was a place of whites-only water fountains and lynchings under cover of darkness. It was a place black people like her mother had fled.
But for Ms. Brown, 59, a retired civil servant from Queens, the South now promises salvation.
Three generations of her family ”” 10 people in all ”” are moving to Atlanta from New York, seeking to start fresh economically and, in some sense, to reconnect with a bittersweet past. They include Ms. Brown, her 82-year-old mother and her 26-year-old son, who has already landed a job and settled there.
The economic downturn has propelled a striking demographic shift: black New Yorkers, including many who are young and college educated, are heading south.
God is good — His mercy endures forever!
Last I heard we Southerners were racist, redneck, dopes with no education and no shoes. Maybe that rumor isn’t true after all?
One of the defining characteristics of Southerners has long been considered to be a sense of place. In my work as a hospice chaplain I’ve met a number of blacks who fled north for opportunity who, upon learning that they were terminally ill, moved back to rural South Carolina to live out there last days at home. This despite the fact that they’d lived up north for 50+ years.