|
Circle Members,
Thank you to those who have already committed to sponsoring A Night at the Met, signed up for auction baskets, and offered to help. Please continue carving out your role in making our gala fundraiser a success! We have a additional way to contribute by donating money for unique auctions items. Check out the Auction section of the newsletter for more details.
I also hope to see you at our Winter Meeting on February 15. Read on for information on what we will collect at the meeting for our beneficiary.
This month, on February 11, we celebrate the 96th anniversary of The Circle. At the turn of the 20th century the area around Tallulah Gorge was neglected by the state of GA. It was, to use a more modern term, a marginalized community receiving little in the way of private or pubic investment. The small population of people living in poverty across a wide area had access to one school room. It was a small, drafty space above a jail that held classes for only three months during the year. It was a long walk for most children and attendance was sporadic.
The women who went on to start Tallulah Falls school and form The Circle noticed the extreme poverty and educational void while summering in the mountains. They started offering classes to the local children on their front porches. Their efforts at fundraising grew into supporting a school and a campus and 75 years after the founding of The Circle the school was no longer dependent on our assistance. Since the 1990s we have supported other forgotten groups of children including infants born with drug addictions, foster kids, trafficked girls, and young people needing institutionalized mental health services.
Currently our fundraising efforts are for City of Refuge to support their resident and community children's programs. City of Refuge, like the early Circle members, serves a marginalized community in the 30314 zip code that suffers from decades of disinvestment. The 30314 zip code has the highest rates of poverty, teen pregnancy, and incarceration in the state.
At the turn of the 19th century the 30314 was vibrant with local businesses serving a stable working class population. It was, and is, home to Friendship Baptist Church, the first black-Baptist church in Atlanta. If you drive around the area you will notice that the now boarded up old homes would have been quite charming in their heyday, with ornate wood trim and welcoming porches.
Then the area was redlined. You are likely familiar with the term. Redlining was a process during the 1930s and 40s to categorize lending risk in different neighborhoods. Redlining was not part of Jim Crow; it occurred not only in the south but across the country. Areas rated “D” and shown as red on related maps were unable to secure mortgages for homes and lending for businesses. Some of the criteria for ratings appears objective; areas with parks were more highly rated, for example, and public green space is an amenity that adds to home value. However, race was also a criteria used in redlining leading to a disproportionate impact on both black neighborhoods and also more diverse neighborhoods with large black populations.
The impact of redlining lingers today because home ownership & business development is an important part of building wealth and sustaining communities. If people in a neighborhood can’t get loans they can’t benefit from home value appreciation, start businesses to employ local residents, or pass assets on to the next generation. They can become trapped in a cycle of community and family decay. On average, as of 2018 Atlanta neighborhoods that were redlined had home values $50K less then neighborhoods that were not redlined, even when controlling for differences in types of housing and amenities. Formerly redlined neighborhoods are also more likely to remain segregated and have higher rates of poverty.
City of refuge is working to blunt the impact of decades of disinvestment child by child and family by family, offering care and shelter, job training, and paths to home ownership. Hellen Keller said “Until the great mass of the people shall be filled with a sense of responsibility of each other’s welfare, social justice can never be obtained”. The founders of The Circle felt that sense of responsibility, as we do today. The organizations we support change over time while the legacy of caring, giving and moving toward more justice remains.
Happy Anniversary to us, and thank you for being part of The Circle!
Belinda Vogel
President
| 
