HATTIE THOMAS WHITEHEAD (SPEAKING TO HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS): I’m no stranger here. I’ve been here before. But today I want to talk with you as a first descendant of Linnentown. I lived in Linnentown with my mother, father, three brothers and three sisters. This is an actual picture of the houses that I was born in. It was on 22 acres of land, three streets – South Finley, Linden Row and Peabody.

BOBBY CROOK: We lived at 167 Peabody Street.

CHRISTINE DAVIS JOHNSON: I lived down on Linden Row, 193 Linden Row.

FREDDIE BROWN JACKSON: And Hattie’s grandfather who was on Finley Street, was my grandmamma’s brother. I lived at 183 Linden Row.

HATTIE THOMAS WHITEHEAD (SPEAKING TO STUDENTS): So I want to talk about this Black community that was made up of 50 families: hardworking adults, construction workers, plumbers, electricians, carpenters, cooks.

BOBBY CROOK: My parents were Roy and Essie Crook. We ran like a a hotel. As you know, in those days, Black people couldn’t go to just any hotel.

FREDDIE BROWN JACKSON: When one person needed something, everybody else pitched in.

HATTIE THOMAS WHITEHEAD: My mom bought up a lot on Peabody Street and the men in the community, the electricians, the plumbers and all built the house. That’s how my parents became homeowners.

HATTIE THOMAS WHITEHEAD (SPEAKING TO STUDENTS): It was segregated then. We went to totally Black schools and we played all over the neighborhood because we knew that the adults in the neighborhood was going to watch after us. In this community, we were happy children.

BOBBY CROOK: The community was tight-knit.

CHRISTINE DAVIS JOHNSON: Everybody was like family.

BOBBY CROOK: Mainly the thing about growing up in Linnentown was the University of Georgia and football. Just a, a neat area because you were so close to the University of Georgia. You could stand in our bedroom and see the 50-yard line.

HATTIE THOMAS WHITEHEAD (SPEAKING TO STUDENTS): This sign right here, I remember it as a child. That’s when the community knew something was wrong.

BOBBY CROOK: I remember vividly coming from school one day and everybody, the whole neighborhood, was in an uproar.

CHRISTINE DAVIS JOHNSON: My mother was really calm and she said, we’re going to have to go.

HATTIE THOMAS WHITEHEAD (SPEAKING TO STUDENTS): U.G.A. wanted the land for expansion. To build dormitories and a parking deck.

HATTIE THOMAS WHITEHEAD: If urban renewal, eminent domain had not happened, we still would have been a family together and we would have been at 141 Peabody. These politicians put that in place. To help colleges and universities, not communities.

TEXT ON SCREEN:
Section 112 of the Housing Act of 1949…the undertaking of an urban renewal project in such an area will further promote the public welfare and proper development of the community.

HATTIE THOMAS WHITEHEAD: The few dollars that they threw at the families was not enough. It was not enough. And the calculations was even different from Black families to white families.

FREDDIE BROWN JACKSON: There’s that old saying you can’t fight city hall? It was a matter of – Freddie baby, we got to find somewhere to go.

HATTIE THOMAS WHITEHEAD: That was the first time I ever saw my mom cry, when she realized that property can be taken from you. All of us shut down and she got where she didn’t talk about anything. So we didn’t know what was going on because she wouldn’t speak it. And my daddy was there, but he could not let us know what was going on either. So it was really hard.

There was a time when I was doing integration. I was going to do my part in making Athens a better place, even though it was going to be hard. And I did. I went to jail, I was locked up, I was – went downtown every time we had to go and sit at the lunch counters. Those long days of being called names and spit on and all of that was within me. And coming home in the evenings listening to what happened in the community was another stack of stress on me as well.

The next thing that we knew that we were moving. My parents were hurt and disappointed. Finally, my dad said that he had to go work at the mountains where he could make more money. But things didn’t work out as well as he thought and he wasn’t able to make as much and so then my momma did the same thing. And so I was left with my older sister and brother. The family splits up my younger brother and sisters – they were, you know, went with aunts and uncles until my daddy came back. But at that time I was graduating.

CHRISTINE DAVIS JOHNSON: My parents were thriving people, worked hard on their property, and we had to go. We had to leave our homes and struggle to find other places.

BOBBY CROOK: We were the last family to leave Linnentown, so I witnessed everybody that lived in Linnentown at that time move. It was like a ghost town. It was like we – people had forgotten about us. That was a big thing, you know, Linnentown being erased.

MELISSA LINK (ATHENS-CLARKE COUNTY COMMISSIONER): My name is Melissa Link and I am the Athens-Clarke County Commissioner for District 2. I knew of this neighborhood that was wiped off the map to make way for U.G.A. dorms. Joey Carter was a graduate student in the department that I work in, the philosophy department. I mentioned the name of the neighborhood. I told him it was called Linnentown. A few weeks later, ran into him again and he had clearly started doing some digging and doing some research.

TEXT ON SCREEN:
“ A group of city officials and University of Georgia officials have been discussing the need for an urban renewal project in an area adjacent to the University campus.”

“Dear President Aderhold:”

“4. If a plan of cooperation could be worked out between the City of Athens and the institution, you might have an opportunity to effect some of your dreams.”

MELISSA LINK: He asked me if I knew anybody who might have lived there. So I put him in touch with my constituents and they were able to put him in touch with Hattie and others. And the Linnentown Project was born.

HATTIE THOMAS WHITEHEAD: The Linnentown Project is made up of first descendants. We start going over some things and start talking about a resolution. And start writing a resolution and put a strategy in place and go to work. So that means forums, tours, demonstrations, meetings, community meetings, whatever we had to do and I, I became an activist again. I started reaching out to President Morehead, and asking him to be a part of this team and to recognize the Linnentown Project.

TEXT ON SCREEN:
JERE MOREHEAD, PRESIDENT, UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA

HATTIE THOMAS WHITEHEAD:  I wanted to meet with him or talk with him, but I never was able to do that. And then you start getting the – President Morehead says you have to talk to the Board of Regents and the Board of Regents, you know, it start pointing fingers, and the fingers pointing in different ways. The first thing we wanted was an apology. That’s the first thing we are taught as children. If you do something wrong to somebody, you need to apologize. So I went to the mayor in Athens and said, will you apologize?

KELLY GIRTZ (MAYOR OF ATHENS, GEORGIA): I remember an early conversation that was very tense.

BOBBY CROOK: We started off rocky.

KELLY GIRTZ: When the first draft of a resolution was brought to myself and the county commission, they were certainly some language that seemed thorny to some of the people who were in elected office at the time.

HATTIE THOMAS WHITEHEAD: Some of the commissioners said they were not going to vote for it if we had white supremacy in there.

KELLY GIRTZ: So if you think about the Athens of the 1960s it wasn’t a safe time to be a homeowner. Because in the urban renewal era, it meant that your home may not remain your home.

ARCHIVAL (A CONVERSATION WITH JAMES BALDWIN, 1963):
JAMES BALDWIN: Cities now are engaged in something called urban renewal, which mean moving negroes out. It means negro removal. That is what it means. And the federal government is an accomplice to this fact.

KELLY GIRTZ: In hundreds of cities across the country, the city collaborated with the federal government to remove what at the time was termed blight.

TEXT ON SCREEN:
Urban Renewal Project Characteristics Report December 31, 1954
“local slum clearance”

KELLY GIRTZ: Every community that had an urban renewal plan used it for different purposes. In some communities, it was highways that tore through neighborhoods. In other communities, it was hospital systems. In some communities, like Athens, it provided a home for educational system expansion.

TEXT ON SCREEN:
Baltimore
Chicago
New York City
Athens, Ga.

CHRISTINE DAVIS JOHNSON: The way the bulldozer at night was pushing the dirt so close to our house, at night, at 1 and 2 o’clock in the morning. And my mother would say just relax, don’t worry. They’re not going to touch this house.

BOBBY CROOK: Brumby Hall was being built right in front of our house, and they would pile pipes on our property, and that was very intimidating.

HATTIE THOMAS WHITEHEAD: To see houses being burned, you had to hear it and you had to smell it all the time. That was some of the terrorizing that we called it, that was done to get us to move out. Some suggested that we change that word. We said, no, we’re not going to change that because we were terrorized.

ARCHIVAL (CITY HALL, 2-4-20):
HATTIE THOMAS WHITEHEAD: I tell my story through pain and gratitude. I saw what happened in Linnentown.
BOBBY CROOK: Just imagine a Black family buying a house in, in 1938. And then it come in 1965, it’s taken away for a little of nothing.
JOEY CARTER: Linnentown is in your house because your predecessors took it from all of the residents. Unilaterally used the power of the city and the state through U.G.A. and the university system of Georgia and the federal government. It is not just what you owe to them. It is what you are obligated to do as a human being.

ARCHIVAL ( ATHENS-CLARKE COUNTY ZOOM MEETING):
KELLY GIRTZ: Commissioner Edwards?
RUSSELL EDWARDS (COMMISSIONER): I was wrong, In fact, it was an act of terrorism to forcibly remove these people from their homes.

HATTIE THOMAS WHITEHEAD: We are at the table. We are negotiating. What do we need to do? Do we walk away or do we stay at the table? So we decided that we would stay at the table. We changed the resolution to say ‘white racism.’ But out of all the things that we had in there, the things that we said that had happened to this community. None of that was questioned.

KELLY GIRTZ: And so as county commissioners learned of these circumstances, I think they grew to understand that this isn’t extremist language. This is simply descriptive language. Part of what it takes for mature leadership is to acknowledge wrongs, because if you don’t acknowledge those wrongs, then you can’t do any differently today.

(END)