"Atlanta could be stained by airport litmus test"

Thursday, August 7, 2003

Column
City could be stained by airport litmus test
By Colin Campbell
The Atlanta (GA) Journal-Constitution


Atlanta faces so many challenges, Mayor Shirley Franklin must wonder why she
ever wanted the job. Collapsing sewers, the homeless, falling sales tax
revenue, problems with the police . . . 

Showering honors on a deceased former mayor, Maynard Jackson, might seem
easy by comparison.

But the opportunity has been framed in such a way that it puts Franklin in a
difficult spot. Like many others (not just African-Americans), she loved and
admired Jackson for his role in the city's struggle for civil rights.

At the same time, Franklin knows that Jackson could be a polarizing figure.

The really thorny problem, though, is the sweeping suggestion -- voiced on
TV by former Mayor Andy Young and supported by Jackson's family -- that
former Mayor William Hartsfield's name be removed from the airport, in
effect, and Jackson's name be put in its stead.

Many have since treated this apparently simple idea as a litmus test: It's
Jackson airport or nothing. But a lot of other people feel that Hartsfield
was an honorable man and that it would be wrong to strip his name from the
airport he loved and helped to build. Better to honor Jackson (we say) with
something new. 

It's possible, of course, that a quiet elite consensus on what to do next is
already brewing. But I don't believe it is. Too many people sound nervous
discussing the issue. The mayor herself has deferred to her special
commission on how best to honor Jackson and former Mayor Ivan Allen Jr. The
commission just closed its suggestion boxes and e-mail ports and will be
working on its recommendations for another month.

Might the mayor's commission recommend a flat-out change to Jackson airport?
If it does, the City Council would probably turn that view into law, and I'd
be surprised if the mayor vetoed the change. 

The resentment, though, would be considerable. Some business people even
worry that the airport name game could become Atlanta's version of the
nasty, costly, racially polarizing debate over the state flag.

If the mayor's commission proposes something else for the airport -- such as
leaving its name alone, or changing it to Hartsfield-Jackson or
Jackson-Hartsfield, or adding some magnificent Jacksonian feature to the
airport -- Jackson's partisans on the City Council would probably vote once,
anyway, for Jackson airport, but they'd probably lose. 

City Councilman C.T. Martin, a key figure in all this, tells me he'll vote
once for Jackson airport, but if necessary he'll accept a bit less.

Franklin plans to be patient. She says her commission has members of deep
experience, and she'll hear their recommendations next month. She'll get to
discuss them with the commission, and then the commission will present them
formally to her and the City Council in September. Before then, the
commission will meet again Aug. 14 and another public hearing will be held
Aug. 26.

Franklin also expects to endorse the commission's recommendations, since she
usually does with these special commissions of hers.

"I think everybody is looking for ideas," Councilman Martin told me
Wednesday. But Martin feels the African-American community strongly favors
renaming the airport for Jackson, the city's first black mayor, and Martin
says the vote in the City Council will require "the courage of people to
stand behind their convictions."

A few Jackson partisans have put the matter in more defensive terms -- as a
matter not only of ensuring justice, but also of retaining black political
clout. 

Such talk could test us all -- the mayor most prominently. But Franklin
insists on being upbeat. "I'm convinced," she told me Wednesday, "that it's
going to work out."


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