By Emmanuel Felton, Photo: Joshua Lott/The Washington Post, The Washington Post, April 1, 2022
If you really concentrate, you can imagine the town that this community’s elders describe. There was the grocery store on the highway, and the gas station. There were the shops where children walked to buy lunch for 50 cents on school days. There was Ms. Sadie’s chicken shack and Dr. Minor’s office. All of that’s gone now. In their place, either vacant lots or dilapidated buildings.
Today, you’re more likely to see loose dogs than people on Lincoln Street, the town’s main drag. There are a couple of horses in a yard just across from the town hall, which used to be the center of a bustling commercial district. Now, Lincoln Street has a handful of homes, the low-slung cinder-block town hall, two churches and just one storefront, Bates Barbecue.
The once-thriving all-Black town of Tullahassee was ravaged by government policies that divested it and other Black communities, said Mayor Keisha Currin. And she says the city is owed reparations to get back on its feet.
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