Old Fourth Ward: Renewal's Uneven March

Lyrics

I start the walk on Auburn Avenue.
The air feels different here. Thicker with ghosts.
January, 1929. You can almost smell the magnolias.
Then you turn the corner, and the timeline snaps.

Here is the house, preserved under glass.
Here is the church, Ebenezer's calm, holding its breath against the noise.
The first Black-owned bank was just down the way,
a story they don't put on the new bronze plaques.
This was a world built on its own terms.
Bedford Pine, they called it, before the name was scrubbed clean for the brochures.

This is the renewal. This is the uneven march.
The ghost of a shotgun house stands next to the steel-frame promise.
One timeline for the tourists at the King Center,
another for the rooftop bar at Ponce City Market.
The sound of progress is a wrecking ball's echo,
and the silence of a moving van in the dark.

Then came 2012. A ribbon of smooth concrete.
The BeltLine, they called it. A new city artery.
Joggers in bright shoes pound the pavement over forgotten foundations.
Honeysuckle and diesel fumes.
Jamestown Properties brought the catalogs to life,
polished the old Sears brick until it gleamed,
a beacon for a different kind of customer.

This is the renewal. This is the uneven march.
The ghost of a shotgun house stands next to the steel-frame promise.
One timeline for the tourists at the King Center,
another for the rooftop bar at Ponce City Market.
The sound of progress is a wrecking ball's echo,
and the silence of a moving van in the dark.

But who is missing from this photograph?
Whose front porch is now a parking space for a scooter?
The rent check that became a final notice.
The corner store that now sells artisanal cheese.
We measure the growth in square footage and tax revenue,
but never in the names that are gone.
We never document the quiet exodus.

From here, you can see the lights of the market.
They glow against the twilight.
They throw long shadows back toward Auburn Avenue.
The march goes on.
The march just goes on.