To Live and Die in Atlanta

This week I had an opportunity to visit some attractions in Atlanta.  Except for my children and grandchildren, I avoid everything Atlanta like the plague.  I hate the traffic, the young black men with their "pants on the ground".  The fear of being shot.  I always get lost finding streets that change their names at every other intersection. The rudeness that often confronts visitors. But with a group, and a driver,  I went to the Atlanta Zoo and the Cyclorama.  I had not visited either since childhood. The Zoo was nice. Not as big as I remembered.  Not as pretty as the Audubon in New Orleans. But it was enjoyable and not overly packed with screaming children nor dangerous looking young men as I had expected. The panda exhibit was worth the trip.  The baby is precious and watching her interact with mother was a wonderful experience and I really did enjoy it.  If I remembered the Cyclorama it was fuzzy at best.  I could remember that the watchers moved around the painting but really it had left little impression on me.  This time the visit was different.  Maybe its my age or the age in which we live, but the painting was so tragic and sad to me. I have never enjoyed stories of the Civil War.  While many love "Gone with the Wind" it has never been my favorite.  I did not love "Cold Mountain" or any other movie that depicted the realities of losing 600,000 people. After the presentation the narrator began a small segment of questions and I noticed a tiny black child holding up her hand.  She waved it back and forth but was small and in the darken theater was overlooked.  As we filed out from the stadium seating, I noticed her tug on the pant leg of the very attractive young black woman who had told us the story of the painting and related how its purchase had been made and later came to Atlanta. The narrator looked down at the child and asked "Peanut, what do you want to ask?".  In a gentle and timid voice, the child asked "Why are they all dead?".  For a moment everyone was silent wondering how the young narrator would respond.  I hope I forget the tragic scenes of the painting, but I never will forget the answer to the question.  Her response was "They failed to talk to each other." To paraphrase her, she said that being a black Southerner she thought everyone expected her to say it was about slavery and no black person would or could justify what happened  She went on to say that most people in that time lived and died only knowing the 40 or so miles surrounding their birth site and that to survive, black and white depended on each other. Almost none of the young men who died in the Battle of Atlanta had slaves, most knew little of why they would die. But when your back was to the wall, you died beside the boy you fished with, the one who helped you through a sickness, who farmed near you. That underneath they were all Southerners and died with the people they knew. They chose to serve and die with their neighbors. It was a moving statement from a young black person in Atlanta.  A city that has been plagued with racial unrest and discord.  But it encouraged me to believe that underneath we are all the same. Struggling with the same issues and in a time of crisis and disaster we can come together, regardless of race or religion.  Reminds me of the way it felt after 9/11.