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99% Invisible

The Epic of Collier Heights

99% Invisible

SiriusXM Podcasts and Roman Mars

Design, Arts

4.828.1K Ratings

🗓️ 7 December 2021

⏱️ 43 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

How a team of community leaders used cold, sharp strategy, flipping the logic of Jim Crow housing segregation on its head to build a suburban Black mecca.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

This is 99% invisible.

0:02.2

I'm Roman Mars.

0:05.7

Back in September, we sent 99-PI producer Christopher Johnson on a reporting trip to Atlanta.

0:11.7

And that's where I met Myrna Clayton at her family home in a very

0:15.4

chill wooded suburb about seven miles west of downtown. Her parents decided to

0:20.6

move here in the summer of 1972, all because of a sleepover.

0:26.5

I had a friend in elementary school.

0:28.9

Her name is Laconia Glass, and I had the joy of being invited to come over to our house for a sleepover.

0:36.9

And we had so much fun playing.

0:38.6

I mean, you know, what the second graders do?

0:40.8

You don't know what second grade girls do. You run around and play.

0:45.0

And getting to Laconia's house was magical.

0:49.0

At the time, Merna and Lecania lived in different neighborhoods.

0:53.5

Merna's community was a little more dense.

0:56.0

Her home was nice, modest.

0:58.5

And then Merna's mom would drive her over to Lecanias.

1:02.1

And wow. We had to Laconias. And wow.

1:03.9

We had to go through these different streets

1:06.2

and around very, it was almost like foresty.

1:09.8

And so it was lots of trees and lots of houses and it seemed like the houses as you got closer and closer got bigger and bigger and bigger

1:19.0

The neighborhood was lush forested with oaks and hickories, and of course, Georgia Pines.

1:26.0

The whole ride bade Merna's little jaw drop.

...

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