Much of today’s political news is filled with discussion and debate about immigration. Which people are coming to America? Which should be permitted to come? And how many should be permitted? Can immigration and Southern hospitality live in the same community? Salvation South editor Chuck Reece today invites you to visit a place where it does.

 

Refuge Coffee

Refuge Coffee (Clarkston, GA)

Credit: Refuge Coffee

TRANSCRIPT:

Chuck Reece: Over the next few minutes, I’ll take you to visit a very special place in Georgia. I’m lucky, because it’s just two blocks from my house.

This place, when I moved to the town of Clarkston, Ga., was an abandoned gas station. The 20-century kind: a concrete pad where the pumps used to be, a building that once held a sales area and two garage bays.

Soon after I moved here, I saw a red coffee truck. A few people were in line outside it. The truck sold coffee only a couple of mornings a week back then. But today, it’s open from 7 to 5, every day but Sunday.

I’ve watched the old service station transform over the years. First, a few picnic tables were added, so folks could sit outside and sip coffee after they bought it from the truck. After a while, tables began appearing inside the old garage bays. Today, that old station has become the Clarkston town square.

The reason that this is more than a small-business success story flows from the name on the side of the truck: Refuge Coffee. 

There are almost 200 designated refugee resettlement areas in the United States, and Clarkston has been one of those for almost 50 years. Our little town has approximately 15,000 people. That population includes about 150 different ethnic groups from around the world. They speak about 60 different languages.

The people of my little town have built their culture and their government around welcoming refugees. Every year, about 1,500 people who are fleeing war or persecution in places like Syria or Myanmar or Iran make new homes in Clarkston. And since the mid-teens, Refuge Coffee has given many refugees their first jobs in America.

I’ve been writing and telling stories about the American South for so long now that a lot of folks’ll ask me questions about the region, especially those who aren’t from here. One is: What does the South really look like right now?

I tell them they ought to come visit me and spend an afternoon at Refuge Coffee. Over the course of three or four cups, you’ll overhear conversations in languages you can’t identify. Dozens of people will come through wearing distinctive clothes from their homelands, and try as you might, you won’t even be able to guess what continent they come from. And everybody welcomes everybody else.

It is Southern hospitality, extended in the widest possible way.

One time, I described Clarkston to a lady I had never met, just as I have described it to you today, and she snapped at me.

“Well, why would you want to live there?”

About a dozen possible answers rose in my head and some were, I must confess, rather hateful. But I took a deep breath and just smiled at the lady.

“Well,” I told her, “I love it.”

Y’all come see us at SalvationSouth.com. Or come see us in Clarkston. I know just where to get a good cup of coffee.

Salvation South editor Chuck Reece comments on Southern culture and values in a weekly segment that airs Fridays at 7:45 a.m. during Morning Edition and 4:44 p.m. during All Things Considered on GPB Radio. Salvation South Deluxe is a series of longer Salvation South episodes which tell deeper stories of the Southern experience through the unique voices that live it. You can also find them here at GPB.org/Salvation-South and wherever you get your podcasts.