The Atlanta University Center: A Founding Cluster

Lyrics

In this room, the air is dry.
Preservation.
I have the gloves on.
The paper is brittle at the folds.
Here. It begins here.

I read the charter for Atlanta University, 1865. Just months after.
And here, Augusta Institute, 1867.
Reverend William Jefferson White.
His signature, a firm black line against the tide.
A school for men of God and men of letters.
They say the whole library came to Atlanta in 1879.
Two trunks on a single train car.
Everything they knew, packed in wood and hope.
Graves Hall rising from the red clay.

And this one. April 11, 1881.
Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary.
In the basement of Friendship Baptist Church.
Eleven students. Some couldn't read. All wanted to.
Sophia Packard, Harriet Giles. Names from the north.
I can almost smell the pine sawdust from the new benches.
The chalk dust in the autumn light.
A school for women.
A radical document.
Later, Rockefeller would visit. And the name would change.
Spelman. A promise kept.

This isn't just ink. It isn't just paper.
This is a covenant.
A cluster of lanterns lit against a long darkness.
On the west side of the city.
Each signature a foundation stone.
Each article a deed to a future that did not yet exist.
A consortium of belief.

Another one from 1881.
The African Methodist Episcopal Church.
Morris Brown College.
Named for a bishop. Built by the faithful.
And later, the theologians would gather.
The Interdenominational Center.
Each school a different facet, a different door.
All on the same hill.
Looking east, toward the capitol.
A silent, academic rebuttal.

But I look in the margins.
In the old ledgers from the bursar's office.
There are names here, too.
Single lines. "Paid, washerwoman, two dollars."
"For kitchen service."
Their signatures are not on the charters.
Their hands built the tables where the charters were signed.
Their labor fed the minds that learned to read them.
They are in the record, if you know where to look.
The unnamed founders.

This isn't just ink. It isn't just paper.
This is a covenant.
A cluster of lanterns lit against a long darkness.
On the west side of the city.
Each signature a foundation stone.
Each article a deed to a future that does not forget.
A consortium of belief.

I place the folder back in the box.
The air settles.
Outside, I can hear a choir practicing.
From the direction of Sisters Chapel.
The work continues.
The ink is still wet.