Fade from Grey: A Memoir of Southside Atlanta

In the summer of 1960, the author accompanies his mother to her unskilled job at an auto paint shop in Southeast Atlanta. On their way, they pass a cemetery for mostly prominent white Atlantans; a dilapidated village inhabited by poor white folks near the site of a mill destroyed during Sherman’s siege of Atlanta, and through the neighborhood where Martin Luther King, Jr., was born, preached, and is now memorialized. The walk is a metaphor for the author’s early life: desperately poor, intertwined with Southern history and culture, and intersected and defined by race. In this story, multiple moves across the city’s south side connect the author with its history and bring him into contact with people and situations that are tragic, humorous, and sometimes mysterious. Ultimately, a life-changing encounter with a Great Ape at the Atlanta Zoo takes the author on an often-reluctant path to decisions and actions that redefine his self-worth and attitude towards others.