Georgia Today: Some charges against 3 'Cop City' activists dropped; Chatham DA race; Corpse flowers

Peter Biello: Welcome to the Georgia Today podcast from GPB News. Today is Wednesday, Sept. 18. I'm Peter Biello. On today's episode, a trio of bail fund administrators have the money laundering charges against them dropped. Candidates for Chatham County District Attorney clash at a forum in Savannah. And the Atlanta Botanical Garden celebrates the blooming of four rare African corpse flowers. These stories and more are coming up on this edition of Georgia Today.

 

Story 1:

Peter Biello: State prosecutors have dropped some charges against three people indicted in connection with protests against a police and firefighter training center being built in Atlanta. The three were charged with money laundering and charity fraud as part of a sweeping prosecution against 61 activists. Marlon Kautz, Adele Maclean and Savannah Patterson coordinated legal aid for those arrested. Civil rights groups called their indictment a heavy-handed effort to silence a political movement. It's unclear why the state attorney general's office dropped the charges, but they and 58 others still face racketeering charges. Meanwhile, city officials expect the training center to open in December.

 

Story 2:

Peter Biello: The two candidates for district attorney in Savannah's Chatham County clashed over their experiences but agreed on Georgia's abortion ban in a forum this week. GPB's Benjamin Payne reports.

Benjamin Payne: Democratic incumbent Shalena Cook Jones told a new program she began since taking office in 2021.

Shalena Cook Jones: We've started a conviction integrity unit and a cold case unit and have successfully prosecuted 20-year-old cases. I'm proud of that, because what that shows is that we never give up on justice.

Benjamin Payne: She criticized Republican challenger Andre Pretorius, who serves as an assistant DA in Effingham County for only being experienced in prosecuting misdemeanors. Pretorius criticized Cook Jones for dismissing many backlogged cases.

Andre Pretorius: I didn't want to run for DA, but now, when I heard what was going on in that office and I worried about the safety of my kids and the amount of mass shootings that happened, I want to be able to take my kids downtown.

Benjamin Payne: Both candidates said they would not prosecute cases under Georgia's six-week abortion ban. For GPB News, I'm Benjamin Payne in Savannah.

 

Story 3:

Peter Biello: Global food and agriculture firm Cargill has chosen an Atlanta technology hub as the location for a new office expected to employ about 400 people. The company said in June that it would establish a new tech and engineering center in Atlanta. Cargill confirmed today that it's subleasing space in Georgia Tech's Technology Square.

Caption

Maya Peters-Greno uses a small brush to clean the grime away from a recently recovered headstone in the Penfield African American Cemetery in Greene County.

Credit: Grant Blankenship/GPB News

Story 4:

Peter Biello: A relatively newly remembered burial ground yields more questions than answers as universities pieced together missing links in the history of Georgia's enslaved populations. GPB's Grant  Blankenship has more on the effort.

Grant Blankenship: Cicadas sing above a grove of magnolias and hardwoods as Maya Peters-Greno kneels over a small tombstone and cleans it. It was only a month ago when Peters-Greno, a history graduate student at the University of Georgia, first saw this headstone and dozens of others in the woods around her.

Maya Peters-Greno: We were just like — we didn't even know what to say. Like, just our jaws were, like.

Grant Blankenship: The understory is filled with royal blue pin flags' color complement to the deep green of the trees, each flag marking a spot where ground-penetrating radar indicated a forgotten grave. But that's not the part that left Peters-Greno speechless.

Maya Peters-Greno: Well, I mean, first of all, that the wall — like, the cemetery wall was built so late, I think. Because they said it was like 1940s, 1950s.

Grant Blankenship: What does it suggest to you that that wall was built so late?

Maya Peters-Greno: Oh, so much hatred, I think. 

Grant Blankenship: The wall is low and red brick, separating the dead. On one side, a well-kept white cemetery where many of the founding generation of Macon's Mercer University and their kin rest. On the other, the graves of African-Americans dating back to the 1830s. The existence of this space was forgotten and unknown to people at Mercer, and even to those who grew up in nearby Greensboro until just a few years ago, when a white groundskeeper elected to pass the knowledge on before he died. Around the same time, a Mercer alumnus studying history in the Scotland graduate school found records describing how the then-Mercer Institute was likely built by enslaved labor.

Spencer Roberts: Right. We have a sign-in sheet. I've got spare parts and stuff.

Grant Blankenship: Spencer Roberts leads digital initiatives at Emory's Pitts Theological Library and coordinates these volunteer cleanup days. He says he's here partly because Penfield might provide a model for Emory as it looks at its own history on its Oxford campus. Roberts says workers in Penfield are beginning to put a number on the burials in this 4-acre site.

Spencer Roberts: We think there are about 1,500.

Grant Blankenship: That's the high estimate. But over 1,000 burials have now been documented but unexplained.

Spencer Roberts: The numbers are just too high here to really explain that number of people.

Grant Blankenship: So why are so many people buried here? Beginning in the 1830s, Mercer Institute was where the leaders of Georgia's white-hot plantation economy educated their sons. Mercer historian Doug Thompson says planners also loaned enslaved labor to the school.

Doug Thompson: We have, through Census data in the 1850s, a recognition that there was a large enslaved population in Penfield. The cemetery is a confirmation of that.

Grant Blankenship: Spencer Roberts suspects when enslaved people from the nearby plantations died, planters saw burying them on tillable land as bad business, so they might have thought:

Spencer Roberts: This land is not useful because it's too hilly. So let's all use that to bury the folks that we have enslaved in our plantations, which would make this a communal enslaved persons' burial ground, which is a unique thing. They don't have many of those throughout the South.

Grant Blankenship: Mercer's Doug Thompson says burials continued here after slavery ended. They stopped in the 1950s after the wall went up.

Doug Thompson: So part of what we're having to work through is who made it go up.

Grant Blankenship: The effect seems clear for generations of Mercer University students, who annually day-trip here for what's still called the Penfield pilgrimage.

Doug Thompson: We stopped learning about the economic system that was undergirding the development of Penfield, which was slavery.

Grant Blankenship: You forget, which makes every grave found and tombstone cleaned...

Maya Peters-Greno: That's, like, so much better.

Grant Blankenship: ...an act of remembering. For GPB News, I'm Grant Blankenship in Penfield.

Credit: Pamela Kirkland

Story 5:

Peter Biello: The Atlanta Botanical Garden celebrated the blooming of not one but four rare African corpse flowers earlier this month. If you blinked, you might have missed it. And researchers don't know when we might see something like this again. GPB's Pamela Kirkland has this audio postcard from the brief but spectacular event.

Derek Pinson: So this is the tropical Rotunda support.

Pamela Kirkland: Derek Pinson is a tropical horticulturist here at the Botanical Garden. He takes me through a maze of misters, plants and flowers.

Derek Pinson: This space is meant to emulate an immersive experience in a rainforest. You might have noticed the sounds here. We have phantasmo poison frogs. They're not poisonous in captivity. They're the ones you can hear. Like, the kind of trill sound. Being able to experience the chorus of frogs. It's very cool. Carmine is an alligator snapping turtle. You see him back there?

Pamela Kirkland: Hi Carmine!

Derek Pinson: Yeah. Visitors love him.

Pamela Kirkland: While there's something to see in every square inch of the Fuqua Conservatory, it's the smell that the visitors here today are hoping for.

Visitor: I didn't smell it, but the way he's explaining things, I'm, like, "fascinating!"

Pamela Kirkland: That smell they're looking for? The signature scent of rotting flesh coming off of the rare African corpse flower to attract the flies that pollinate it.

Derek Pinson: Botanical name is aristolochia goldieana. It does not bloom very often at all. It's a very rare thing.

Pamela Kirkland: The stench really only lasts the first day, according to Pinson. The plant even looks like flesh with bright purple veining along the leaves.

Derek Pinson: We've had a few visitors coming through who are looking for the full experience. Of course, I would be, too.

Visitor: Isn't that beautiful?

Visitor: So bizarre.

Derek Pinson: So it has a vining habit. It grows as high in the canopy as it can get to take advantage of the sunlight. And then it flowers at ground level because that's where its pollinators hang out.

Pamela Kirkland: Visitors here like Julia Jones wanted to make sure they didn't miss their chance to see it.

Julia Jones: Yeah, I was scared that it was going to die off before I got to see it. I came back in town last night and I was trying to get some friends to come, but they had other stuff going on. Like, this is really important to see.

Pamela Kirkland: The blooms only lasted about a week. As for the next time we might see the African corpse flower...

Derek Pinson: There is a possibility that it could be a once in a lifetime opportunity to see this. We — we don't really know exactly what conditions came together and just the right way to cause it to bloom.

Pamela Kirkland: But Pinson hopes marvels like this one keep a curious public coming back for more.

Derek Pinson: For anyone who's curious at all, or even anyone who's new to the plant world completely. Sometimes this is all it takes. Something that's just so fascinating and eye catching and rare like this to sort of open your eyes to the fascinating qualities of all the plants around us.

Pamela Kirkland: For GPB News, I'm Pamela Kirkland in Atlanta.

Story 6:

Peter Biello: Former President Jimmy Carter's upcoming 100th birthday brought together a star-studded roster of celebrities and dignitaries in Atlanta last night. GPB's Sarah Kallis reports.

Sarah Kallis: Artists and community leaders praised Carter's legacy inside and outside of the White House as they walked the red carpet at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta. Bernice King, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s daughter, spoke at the event as well.

Bernice King: His incredible work around peace and justice and equality and being very fervent in that and grounded in his faith and leading this nation I think is remarkable and worthy of continuing to be honored. And we're glad he's still with us.

Sarah Kallis: A celebratory concert followed the red carpet. The B-52's, India.Arie and others performed. Carter is set to become the first U.S. president to reach 100 years of age on his birthday Oct. 1. For GPB News, I'm Sarah Kallis in Atlanta.

 

Story 7:

Peter Biello: In college football: UGA all-American guard Tate Ratledge underwent tightrope surgery on his sprained left ankle on Monday and is expected to miss a handful of games. Ratledge, a senior from Rome, Ga., was hurt in the second quarter of the team's 13 to 12 victory at Kentucky last Saturday. Tightrope surgery involves an orthopedic implant that is used to stabilize an ankle after injury. The procedure typically has a recovery period of 4 to 6 weeks.

In golf, fans can get more of the Masters Tournament in April 2025. The Masters and CBS said yesterday they are expanding weekend coverage of the tournament by five hours, bringing the total hours of live coverage to 23. The Masters Tournament is held every year in April in Augusta, Ga.

And in baseball: Michael Harris II and Matt Olson homered for Atlanta but the Braves blew a four-run lead in a costly 6 to 5 loss to the Cincinnati Reds yesterday. Pierce Johnson and Jesse Chavez struggled as Atlanta dropped its third consecutive game. In all, the Braves left 14 runners on base. And with the loss, the Braves fell two games behind the New York Mets for the third NL wildcard. In other words, if the regular season ended today, the Braves start the offseason while others advance to the playoffs. The Braves face the Reds again tonight in Cincinnati.

 

Peter Biello: And that's a wrap on this edition of Georgia Today. Thanks so much for tuning in. Because you listen to this podcast, we ask you to also consider supporting it. Public media is brought to you because of you — listeners like you making contributions to GPB, which is a nonprofit and mission-driven. We want to make sure you're informed about your community, and we can only do that with your help. So make a gift at GPB.org in any amount, maybe 5 or 10 bucks a month as a GPB Sustainer. You can give ia GPB.org or call (800) 222-4788. And thanks so much for supporting GPB. If you want to catch the latest news, you could always check our website, GPB.org/news. And make sure you subscribe to this podcast. When you do, we'll pop up in your feed automatically tomorrow. Feedback is always welcome. You can send it by email. The address is GeorgiaToday@GPB.org. I'm Peter Biello. Thanks again for listening. We'll see you tomorrow.

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