2023 24 Black Pages FINAL 2 - Flipbook - Page 125
Historic Markers Highlighting Macon’s Black Community’s Past on the Way
Clarence Thomas, Jr.
thomasjr63@gmail.com
MGI Contributor
This spring historic markers highlighting Macon’s Black community’s highs and lows will
debut downtown, providing an important resource for current and future residents and visitors.
Born out of Wesleyan College’s 2020-2023 participation in the Crafting Democratic Futures
Project, a national network of nine colleges and universities selected through the Center for
Social Solutions to work with their local communities on racial reparations projects, the markers
are the collective creation of Macon 200 Bicentennial Subcommittee members and local historic
preservationists, educators, researchers, and culture keepers.
The Wesleyan’s Lane Center for Social and Racial Equity - headed up at the time by Dean
Tonya Parker, now with Georgia Tech - worked with community partner the Tubman African
American Museum to host community meetings to discuss what community members identified
as reparative justice needs in Macon.
After two years of listening meetings, more diversely represented art across Macon; better
tactics to address educational discrepancies in the K-12 educational system; and better
representation and preservation of Macon’s rich African American history were recommended
as starting points to bring balance.
Following info sessions with former Tubman curator and Bicentennial Committee member
Jeffrey Bruce, Wesleyan invited the Bicentennial Subcommittee on historic markers and
community members who had participated in the Tubman meetings to discuss potential sites
according to Dr. Melanie Doherty, a Wesleyan professor and the Crafting Democratic Futures
Coordinator.
Some of the marker team members included Middle Georgia Regional Library Genealogical
Room head Muriel Jackson, educator and historian Dr. Thomas Duval, and community
advocate George Fadil Muhammad who identified three locations: Cotton Avenue, Popular
Street, and the Old Bibb County Courthouse site on Martin Luther King Blvd to place the
markers. Cotton Avenue because of its reputation as a Black economic power center back in
the day, and the Poplar Street and Old Bibb County Courthouse sites, as locations where
Whites bought Blacks to perform free labor during slavery.
Doherty say the markers will make visible Macon’s often overlooked Black history by
recognizing both sites of celebration and mourning as they simultaneously represent important
progress for Macon. “As a city with such rich sites of African American history, it speaks highly
about the capacity of our community to recognize sites to celebrate and sites to mourn,” she
said. “If we don’t recognize sites where the enslaved suffered, we do a deep disservice to future
generations.”
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