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New Podcast Explores Lingering Effects Of The Atlanta Child Murders
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It’s been nearly 40 years since the Atlanta Child Murders paralyzed the city.
29 African-Americans, mostly boys, were killed over a two-year span before Wayne Williams was arrested.
Payne Lindsey and Donald Albright are with local production company Tenderfoot TV.
They joined me in the studio to talk about Atlanta Monster, their new podcast with HowStuffWorks that explores the murders.
SELECTED INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS
STEPHEN FOWLER: It's now 2018. These murders took place decades ago. Why are you revisiting this particular case at this particular time?
PAYNE LINDSEY: You know, I was born in 1987, so I wasn't even around when this was happening. But as I started digging into this case and learning more about it, I just saw so many parallels between 2018 and even 1980.
How much has changed and how much really hasn't changed and all the racial issues that surround this case are really still relevant here today.
FOWLER: Donald, this podcast is inherently centered on African-Americans in Atlanta in the late 70s and early 80s.
You are an African-American man working with Payne, who is white. How did that dynamic of race and that dynamic of different generational experiences come into play with producing this podcast?
DONALD ALBRIGHT: I think it was a huge advantage.
You know, I'm 10 years older than Payne, I’m from California, I was 2 years old when this was happening. But I remember it being part of my life growing up just hearing about it.
Whereas Payne may have heard it in passing, but nothing that stuck with him, because you know he was born 10 years after.
I think the dynamic that we have is that I know what’s going to reach my audience and he knows what’s going to reach that the millennial, younger audience who's into podcasts a lot more than you know the 40-to-60 year old African-American community.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7SAyzbu7B8
FOWLER: A lot of this podcast pulls from archival audio, a lot of it pulls from Payne's curiosity and narration as he explores through this. But a lot of it comes from in-person interviews with people that are affiliated and associated with this case.
How did you find these people and how did you convince them to talk?
LINDSEY: Just in general just finding them was difficult. And then once you found them they haven't talked about this case in probably 10-plus years and it's a very sensitive topic.
Every family member I've talked to, they've all told me the same thing: They don't feel like the door has been closed on this case.
They don't feel like there has been justice and that alone is what's been driving me.
FOWLER: And let's listen to some of the opening seconds of the podcast, where you talked to two brothers who lived in Atlanta in that time.
SOUNDBITE: “It was always be careful, you know… everywhere you go, go in groups. You know what I’m saying? It was like everybody was scared. Definitely the people from where we grew up, Like, around from where we from, everybody was scared because that's where he was getting the kids from…”
ALBRIGHT: Yes, that's Jasper and Eric Cameron.
So we wanted to hear from the people who are here, you know? And the only people qualified to speak about this are people that we're talking to.
FOWLER: I want to play one final clip from the opening episode. This is Calinda Lee with the Atlanta History Center talking about the racial divide in the city at the time.
SOUNDBITE: “That fracture I don't think was ever fully healed within the Atlanta community. There was a sense that maybe you know, some folks felt safe, or felt safe enough based on a degree of economic privilege. And again, that these folks who were most marginalized already anyway just were kind of left to fend for themselves.”
Donald, the look on your face right now after listening to that clip suggests that that's not just an isolated case from 30 years ago.
ALBRIGHT: That's not an isolated case from 30 years ago. It's not an isolated case of what was just going on in Atlanta 30 years ago.
I think if you look at what's going on today in America, that's the parallel.
I mean, we have the same divides. I think a lot of progress has been made where we've pulled a lot of people up to the top.
But a lot have been left at the bottom and it looks like progress more than actually feels like progress to most people.
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