Paschal's:

Paschal's Motor Hotel and Restaurant which was bought in 1997 by HBCU Clark Atlanta University, will be destroyed. This makes me very sad. Paschal's was at the heart of the old nonviolent civil rights movement. MLK, Andy Young, John Lewis, and Ralph David Abernathy met there, the march from Selma to Montgomery was planned there, and in segregated Atlanta Paschal's was one of the only comfortable places that black leaders could even meet. It was also a place that white liberals could feel comfortable in and Paschal's helped bring in some of the white leadership on the side of civil rights. The history of Paschal's is in many ways the history of the civil rights movement in the south.

Atlanta is a city without a focus. It has a hard time luring convention visitors and tourists because there isn't one defining characteristic that makes one think of Atlanta. Not like Las Vegas, New Orleans, Orlando. Why can't Atlanta's focus be the rich history of the civil rights movement? That, to me, is the most important part of the history of Atlanta: the city's ability to integrate peacefully and to influence civil rights all over the south. Every year, some of that legacy is lost in Atlanta and some day it will be all gone. And that's a shame. I want my kids to understand as much as they can the courage and love of the civil rights marchers, to see what conditions they faced and how they overcame them.

There's some irony here. If Paschal's had been owned by a white college (say Emory for the sake of argument), the restaurant could not have been closed. Clark Atlanta is facing the cries of traitor and black sheep; can you imagine the cries of racism if Emory tried to close Paschal's?