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Georgia Today: Harris begins Ga. bus tour; Senate pushes trans athlete ban; "Segregation Academies"
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On the Wednesday August 28th edition of Georgia Today: VP Kamala Harris kicks off a two day bus tour today in South Georgia; Georgia senate republicans push to ban transgender women from womens sports; And a look at what it's like for the few Black students attending what historians call "segregation academies"
Peter Biello: Welcome to the Georgia Today podcast from GPB news. Today's Wednesday, Aug. 28. I'm Peter Biello. On today's episode, Vice President Kamala Harris kicks off a two day bus tour today in South Georgia. Georgia Senate Republicans push to ban transgender women from women's sports, and we'll take a look at what it's like for the few black students attending what historians call "segregation academies." These stories and more are coming up on this edition of Georgia Today.
Peter Biello: Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, kicked off a two day bus tour today of South Georgia. Savannah resident Billy Sires says he comes from a Republican family, but that he leans Democratic and is undecided about who he will vote for in November.
Billy Sires: I was really excited when I started hearing Robert F Kennedy speak and a lot of the things that he was saying, but with him backing out and backing Trump, it just kind of shocked me a lot. So that just really put me into a place where it's like, I truly don't really know who I want to put my vote behind.
Peter Biello: Savannah resident Andy Reinertsen says he was energized by President Joe Biden's decision to drop out of the race to make way for Harris at the top of the ticket.
Andy Reinertsen: I think it's refreshing to have a younger candidate in comparison to, like, the last election or everything leading up to this point, we had to deal with either an 81 year old man or a 78 year old man. And that's just not that's not exciting. I don't think anybody, I don't think of majority of the country really relates or resonates with that certain demographic.
Peter Biello: The campaign will culminate with a rally in Savannah tomorrow. The tour is meant to expand support for Democrats beyond Atlanta and its suburbs. Meanwhile, Republican Governor Brian Kemp is expected to headline a fundraiser for former President Donald Trump in Atlanta tomorrow. Kemp's plans, first reported by ABC news, continue a mending of a public feud between Trump and Kemp, one that Republicans believed is important to put behind them to deliver Trump to victory in November.
Peter Biello: A Georgia Senate committee is starting a new push by Republicans in the state to ban transgender women from participating in women's sports. GPB's Sarah Kallis reports the panel held its first meeting yesterday.
Sarah Kallis: Senators on the committee heard from five former female collegiate swimmers who competed against a transgender woman during an NCAA tournament hosted by Georgia Tech in 2022. None of the swimmers who testified were from Georgia or attended Georgia colleges. The transgender swimmer swam for University of Pennsylvania. Senator Greg Dolezal chairs the committee. He said the athletes' testimony could inform their legislation.
Greg Dolezal: What I try to do is to find what the right answer is from a public policy perspective and pursue that right answer. Before we have 50 examples of something going haywire.
Sarah Kallis: Dolezal said the committee will meet monthly until December. For GPB news, I'm Sarah Kallis in Atlanta.
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Peter Biello: Commissioners in metro Atlanta's Cobb County are dropping their long running challenge to local redistricting maps drawn by state lawmakers. The Democratic Majority Commission yesterday agreed to use the Republican drawn maps after a judge ruled that its county drawn maps were unconstitutional. But the commission deadlocked over whether a Democratic commissioner should have to vacate her seat because she doesn't live in her district as drawn by the state. The vote ends a bitter two year old partisan fight that pitted county versus state powers in court.
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Peter Biello: A judge has denied bond for a fired Florida sheriff's deputy who fatally shot U.S. Air Force Senior Airman Roger Fortson. Former Okaloosa County Deputy Eddie Duran has been charged with manslaughter with a firearm in the May 3rd shooting death of the 23 year old Fortson, who is from Georgia. The judge yesterday ordered Duran held without bond until a pretrial detention hearing scheduled for tomorrow.
Peter Biello: Family members of a man with a history of mental illness who died in the custody of the Macon-Bibb County jail, say they're still waiting for answers about how he died. GPB's Grant Blankenship has more.
Grant Blankenship: Steven Fossett struggled with schizophrenia and had been in and out of the Bibb County Jail a number of times before he died in May, after being stun gun by jailers. His family wants to know more. Now, their attorneys are pressing for a release of all the documents related to Fossett's death and a full investigation by local prosecutors. Attorney Muwali Davis.
Muwali Davis: He was their responsibility. And then he ended up going from the jail to the hospital and being pronounced dead. There's something fundamentally wrong about that when he's their responsibility.
Grant Blankenship: Bibb County Coroner Leon Jones says he, too, is still waiting for autopsy results from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Bibb County Sheriff's Office says they are still investigating Fossett's death. For GPB news, I'm Grant Blankenship in Macon.
Peter Biello: Maritime interests on Georgia's coast are coming out against a plan that could end federal maintenance of several smaller waterways and harbors. GPB's Orlando Montoya has more.
Orlando Montoya: The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says the agency hasn't dredged nine Georgia waterways in decades without much impact. And so they want Congress to deauthorize them from federal maintenance. Their goal is to save taxpayer money on required periodic surveys. But seafood harvester Charlie Phillips says many small businesses depend on those small waterways, including his and others on the Sapelo River.
Charlie Phillips: There's a couple of shrimp docks. We pack fish. We also do clam aquaculture. I would say there's probably at least $10 million a year in commercial product that comes in the Sapelo River.
Orlando Montoya: The Sapelo and Saint Mary's rivers and the Darien Harbor are among those targeted for the de-authorization. For GPB news, I'm Orlando Montoya.
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Peter Biello: Commissioners in northwest Georgia's Floyd County are rejecting plans for the site of the Rome Speedway. Business at the 58 year old racetrack has slowed, and owners want local officials to rezone the property and adjacent land from suburban residential to heavy industrial. It comes as northwest Georgia attracts new solar panel and battery manufacturers. Local development officials want to market the property to new potential industries, but speedway neighbors worry about putting heavy industry on one of the main corridors coming into Rome. County planning officials recommended against the rezoning, saying they didn't have enough information about exactly what development was being planned. Commissioners yesterday unanimously agreed with planning staff and rejected the rezoning request. Local development officials, however, could return to the commission to try again with more specific development plans.
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Peter Biello: Albany's Phoebe Health is celebrating the opening of a new $47 million expansion aimed at addressing South Georgia's healthcare workforce shortage. Hundreds of people attended the ribbon cutting last night for a new building called the Living and Learning Community, on Phoebe's main campus. The project is a partnership with Albany Technical College. It Includes learning and office space, as well as 80 furnished apartments for health care professionals and training. Phoebe says nearly 400 students are currently enrolled in programs to be based at the community.
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Peter Biello: Many private schools in the South were founded as whites only institutions in the early days of school desegregation. Today, state voucher programs are said to help families of any origin attend those schools. So what's it like for the few black students attending, what historians still call "segregation academies?" In collaboration with ProPublica, GPB's Grant Blankenship has one story.
Grant Blankenship: When Cookie Mitcham and her great granddaughter, Zoe Johnson step into the main first floor gallery of Macon's Tubman African-American Museum, they stop at a wall of old photographs of young women.
Zoe Johnson: There you go, grandmama. This you ain't it?
Cookie Mitcham: Oh, man. Isn't that something?
Grant Blankenship: There on the wall is a teenage Cookie next to the other young women who were the first black students at Macon's AL Miller Senior High School for girls.
Cookie Mitcham: She came with me. She came.
Grant Blankenship: This was some 60 years ago.
Zoe Johnson: How do you feel about being in a museum, grandma?
Cookie Mitcham: Like a dinosaur.
Grant Blankenship: Cookie was one of eight or so black students in a school of 500. And she says, for the most part, students and teachers were kind to her. But one incident still lives in her memory.
Cookie Mitcham: Well, this girl asked me if I had a tail. I spread it, my legs and I looked down. I said, do you see a tail under there? She said, now. I said, well, I guess I don't have one.
Grant Blankenship: About four years before that, a private school, Stratford Academy, named for the birthplace of Robert E Lee, opened in Macon. More tuition base schools followed.
Cookie Mitcham: I think the only reason these private white schools was created was to make sure they were separated from us.
Grant Blankenship: And their early days, those schools were exclusively white. That's why many educational experts and historians still call them segregation academies.
Cookie Mitcham: And all it has done was make a big mess.
Grant Blankenship: And making these schools still appear to be thriving. And last year, Zoe's family chose one of them for her. For seventh grade.
Zoe Johnson: I attend a PhD, which is called First Presbyterian Day School.
Grant Blankenship: At 7 p.m. she likes. For one thing, FPD has tennis passion. Zoe and Cookie share that wasn't offered at the old public school, Miller Middle. But in this Majority-black city, only about 11% of FPD students are African-American like Zoe. Never middle is the demographic mirror image of that, and it's hard to know if FPD is better academically. While Miller is the highest performing public middle school in the county. FPD doesn't publish the kind of data that would allow a real comparison. But the school is faith based. Zoe's family wanted that.
Cookie Mitcham: ABC to go to the Lord really requires three things to do justice.
Grant Blankenship: That is, to do what's right, to love kindness so and so. For cookie, private school for her great granddaughter has been a mixed bag.
Cookie Mitcham: I would rather for her to go to a predominantly black school, but the reason that I want her to go to FPD is because she will pay more attention.
Cookie Mitcham: So today, do what's right.
Grant Blankenship: Show. The feeling in the family is that public school is just too chaotic. Zoe appreciates the calm at FPD, but she knows it's not perfect.
Zoe Johnson: One thing that I would like FPD to change is maybe accepting more blacks as teachers, or letting blacks tell their part of the story and how they feel, instead of guys just letting them all be alumni. Choose one nation under God and.
Grant Blankenship: And these schools still cost money.
Cookie Mitcham: I'm getting a discount and I'm paying $1,000 a month. I can't afford that anymore.
Grant Blankenship: That's after a state funded scholarship program. And the financial investment has not insulated Zoe from some of the same hurt her great grandmother experienced 60 years ago.
Zoe Johnson: My friend. She was called a monkey.
Grant Blankenship: Zoe says her friend's tears broke her heart.
Zoe Johnson: I told her that you shouldn't actually listen to what he says because we are better than that.
Grant Blankenship: And her great grandmother cookie was incensed.
Cookie Mitcham: She's having to pay money to go to school to hear that crap. And I didn't pay one dime to go to school, and I heard.
Grant Blankenship: And so cookie asks.
Cookie Mitcham: When is it going to end?
Grant Blankenship: That story was adapted from a short documentary by filmmaker Liz Mohan and from reporting by ProPublica South reporter Jennifer Berry Hawes, who joins me now to talk more about the story. Hi, Jennifer. Good afternoon.
Jennifer Berry Hawes: Hi, Grant. It's great to be with you.
Grant Blankenship: So this is the fourth story in your series about the legacy of segregation academies in the South. Why did you embark on this reporting project now?
Jennifer Berry Hawes: It really began a couple of years ago when I was working on a story about school disparities in South Carolina, and I went to a town called Summerton, South Carolina, which is the birthplace of a case called Briggs versus Elliott. And the Briggs case is one that wound up being folded into what we know now is Brown versus Board of Education. And when I went to Summerton, I found that the school systems there looked very much like they did before Brown, which is to say that most of the black children went to school, in the public school system, and most white kids went to the private schools. And so when the anniversary of the Brown decision came up this year, my editors and I decided it would be a great time to, take a look at the segregation academy phenomenon more deeply. And it also coincided with the voucher movement.
Grant Blankenship: You know, most of us are just trying to help our kids get the best education we can, right? In choosing between a public and a private school. What can any of us actually know objectively about how these schools stack up against each other?
Jennifer Berry Hawes: If you look at standardized test scores, it's one barometer that a lot of people do use. It's very difficult because most private schools don't have to report their test scores publicly. Whereas private schools, or public schools generally do. But there are exceptions. For instance, in the state of Alabama, their voucher like program does require a standardized test. The group of students in Alabama who tend to use these scholarships are generally economically disadvantaged children. So if you look at economically disadvantaged children in the public schools, and you compare them to private schools that are receiving students who are attending on these voucher style tuition grants, you really don't see a huge difference in the test scores.
Grant Blankenship: What's left for you to ask about this? What are your outstanding questions and where are you going next?
Jennifer Berry Hawes: Well, I have a few questions, as you can imagine. One of my questions is how these voucher style programs will affect segregation academies. Do we see more, more segregation academies, receiving public dollars? And what is the racial makeup of the students, using them to attend those schools?
Grant Blankenship: That's Jennifer Barry Hawes, who series of stories about the legacy of the South's segregation academies are online now at ProPublica. And you can see and read the rest of the story you just heard@gpb.org. Jennifer, thank you so much for joining us.
Jennifer Berry Hawes: Thank you for having me.
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Peter Biello: In sports, practice rounds are underway at Eastlake Golf Club in Atlanta today as the Tour Championship returns to Eastlake for the 24th time. It's expected to be a close battle between number one ranked Scottie Scheffler and Xander Shauffele. Of Eastlake itself, Shauffele says, quote, it's in the same property, similar square footage, but that's about it. Eastlake has recently gone through an extensive renovation by architect Andrew Green, who most notably refurbished Oak Hill for the PGA Championship last year. Golfers so far are reporting stark changes. Green used 1949 aerials of Eastlake and restoring the course that dates to 1904. Every tee, fairway, green and bunker was rebuilt. The bunkers around the 18th green are deep. The bunker on the 15th hole has been removed. The eighth hole has been shortened. The 14th hole has been lengthened and now plays as a par five. The first round of competition is scheduled for tomorrow.
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Peter Biello: In baseball, the Braves face the twins tonight. Minnesota for the last of a three game series. Chris Sale is scheduled to get the start. The Braves scored four times in the 10th inning to beat the Twins 8-6 last night. Atlanta led four to nothing before the Twins rallied late and won for the eighth time in ten games. Atlanta closer Raisel Iglesias got the win.
And that's all we've got for this edition of Georgia Today. Thanks so much for tuning in. We hope you'll listen tomorrow as well. It's a great way to stay on top of Georgia news. You can subscribe to this podcast, and when you do, we will pop up automatically in your podcast feed and any time of day you can check the latest headlines at our website, GPB.org/News. We thrive on listener feedback, and we love to hear about what's going on in your community. If you've got something we should know about or something we should change about this podcast, let us know. The best way to reach us is email GeorgiaToday@gpb.org is the email address that will go to the whole team here. Again the email GeorgiaToday@gpb.org. I'm Peter Biello. Thanks again for listening. We'll see you tomorrow.
For more on these stories and more, go to GPB.org/news
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