We are upon the ancestral lands of the native Cherokee and Muskogee people, from which the present-day City of Atlanta was stolen over centuries through the violent acts of colonization and forced displacement.
We must also acknowledge that the culture, economic growth, and development upon this land are indebted to the labor of enslaved African people. The deep-rooted wounds of colonization, slavery, Jim Crow, and ongoing, rampant white supremacy have left irreversible effects on the African American and Indigenous communities.