Stop the Road: When the Neighborhood Stood Still

Lyrics

[Intro]
It came as a whisper, then a rumor on the wind.
Then a notice, tacked to a door.
A thick red line on a city planner's map, drawn straight through our living rooms.
They called it progress.
The Stone Mountain Tollway.

[Verse 1]
It was a river of concrete they wanted.
Six lanes wide.
To pour it over the bungalows on St. Charles, to swallow the porches on Greenwood.
A straight shot for commuters who didn't live here, who would never stop here.
Just a blur through a car window.
They saw an obstacle.
We saw our homes.

[Chorus]
But the porches started talking.
The kitchens became war rooms.
And a single voice became a thousand, saying the same two words.
Stop the road.
We are the neighborhood.
Stop the road.

[Verse 2]
In the basement of the local church, over stale coffee and the smell of mimeograph ink.
Mrs. Ann Carter spread the maps on a folding table.
We weren't planners.
We weren't politicians.
We were just people who knew the sound of our own street.
And we drew our own lines.
Right here.
No further.

[Chorus]
Because the porches were talking.
The kitchens were our war rooms.
And a single voice became a thousand, shouting the same two words.
Stop the road.
We are the neighborhood.
Stop the road.

[Bridge]
Years went by.
The red line on the map faded, but it was never erased.
They said we couldn't win.
They said the earth movers were already warming up.
But we just kept meeting.
We kept writing letters.
We kept showing up.
Until one afternoon in the middle of the nineteen-seventies...
...the city blinked.

[Outro]
They never poured that concrete.
The scar they planned became a park.
They call it Freedom Park now.
A green reminder.
Of the time the neighborhood stood still.
And refused.
To be moved.