Old Fourth Ward: Shifting Ground

Lyrics

Old Fourth Ward…
I remember you when you were just red clay.
Before the first curb was set.
When the rain made you run in rusty rivers down to the creek.
Just soil, waiting.

Then the sound came… a train whistle from Terminal Station.
Carrying the Great Migration on its breath.
New hands to lay the brick, new feet to pack the dirt paths hard.
They built their lives right on top of you.
Little houses, shoulder to shoulder.
The smell of coal smoke in 1895, then the shouting from Ebenezer.
Auburn Avenue was the spine…
And Buttermilk Bottom, the soft, beating heart.

Oh, the shifting ground.
You never stay the same.
A memory in the mud, a promise in the dust.
A river of progress runs under the pavement.
Sometimes it carries, sometimes it claims.
This shifting ground.

Then the other sound came.
Not a train, but a grinding roar.
The sixties.
The taste of ash in the mouth.
Bulldozers for Buttermilk Bottom.
Ivan Allen Jr. had a map, you see.
A new plan for the city's soul.
They scraped you clean.
Tore the houses out like bad teeth, leaving a raw, open gum.
And the people… scattered like seeds on the wind.

Oh, the shifting ground.
You never stay the same.
A memory in the mud, a promise in the dust.
A river of progress runs under the pavement.
Sometimes it carries, sometimes it claims.
This shifting ground.

They poured the Connector right through your gut.
A concrete scar, a dam for the people.
I-75, I-85.
Just numbers on a sign.
But it was a wall.
And the city was too busy to hate, too busy to notice
The quiet erasing, the names lost in the noise.
Grace Towns Hamilton spoke up, but the engines were too loud.

Now… a new sound.
The whine of a crane.
The tap-tap-tap of new construction.
They're building on the ghosts.
They're planting trees in the wound.
Old Fourth Ward… you shifting ground.
What do you remember under all this weight?
What are you becoming this time?