Pearl Cleage’s Tribute to Maynard Jackson: Atlanta’s First Black Mayor

It was 50 years ago when Atlanta, the capital of the New South solidified its reputation of being “The Black Mecca”. That is when the charismatic wavy head vice mayor Maynard Jackson was sworn in as the city’s first African American mayor.Award winning author and playwright Pearl Cleage who was Jackson’s first press secretary is paying tribute to her former boss in an Alliance Theatre production of “Something Moving: A Meditation on Maynard Jackson” Aug. 3 -11.“I really wanted to do a piece that used the memories that I had of how exciting it was, how exhausting it was in just making it work in a way that is just so different,” Cleage said during a phone interview. “This was like a big transitional moment and the things that we were trying to do we never had a chance to do before.”A graduate of Morehouse College and the descendent of prominent black Atlantans, Jackson had survived a nasty mayoral campaign launched by the city’s first Jewish mayor Sam Massell. Elected with the help of black voters, Massell was not ready to give up the mayor’s office after only one term. He ran a highly negative campaign titled: “Atlanta: The City...