Among the many lessons I learned from my maternal grandmother, Mary L. Crane, was that it can be tough to hate up close. Mary was an Irish-Catholic carpetbagger, who moved her family south from upstate New York in 1949. Her father, a first-generation Irish American, had been a successful but modest neighborhood grocer. She lost her mother as a child, and her father, Tom Kenney, busy with that grocery, worried that his wild child might never be fully educated or gain the polish of a lady. He married a slightly older, spinster school principal, who brought discipline and academic rigor to the household. The stepmother also was not Catholic and would later introduce Mary and her younger brother to her faith and other aspects of her world.
Mary Crane and her husband Bud and their son and daughter would later move to the south and later begin a modest chain of suburban weekly newspapers, based in Decatur, Georgia. Mary was fascinated by other cultures and faiths, traveled broadly, and, in a time, when businesswomen were rare and color lines and racial contrasts were starkly drawn, Mary Crane pretty much went and visited whomever she pleased wherever she pleased.
During the early 1970s, she became close with Dr. Eugene Walker, as well as his wife Patricia. Dr. Walker decided as DeKalb’s demographics were quickly shifting, that it was time for a black man to serve on the DeKalb School Board. My grandmother took Dr. Walker from place to place and from business leaders to elected officials making introductions.
Dr. Walker did not win that first race, but with Mary's help and thousands of votes from many others, he won the second time. He would later be elected to the Georgia State Senate in 1984 and would become the first African American to hold the position of Majority Whip in the State Senate and later served as the Senate Floor Leader for Governor Zell Miller, through the end of 1992. At the end of that same month, Mary Crane succumbed to a long battle with failing lungs and emphysema. At her funeral a few weeks later, there was State Senator Walker, towering over other friends and family as one of her pallbearers.
Gene Walker would spend more than four decades in public service, ending that work again as a member of the DeKalb School Board. His son, Pete Walker is now the extremely talented Director of the Housing Authority of DeKalb County.
This brings me back to the present, the 11-year-old municipality of Brookhaven was recently ‘gifted’ in many public places and spaces, with anti-Semitic fliers, some graffiti, and even projected light messages of hate speech, in the almost immediate aftermath of the October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel by Hamas. I stand firmly with Israel.
Brookhaven's Mayor and Council moved swiftly, with one of metro Atlanta's largest Jewish communities inside the city and adjacent Jewish neighborhoods and synagogues around Emory University and Toco Hill Shopping Center, in crafting an ordinance to raise the penalties and consequences of distributing written materials containing Hate Speech, or antisemitic messages as well as graffiti espousing acts of hatred or violence against those of Hebrew faith.
During a recent Brookhaven City Council meeting, a bevy of speakers signed up for public comment via Zoom, during a public hearing focused on the adoption of the 2024 budget for the city. Speaker after speaker instead lambasted the Mayor, Council, and the city, over the ordinance aimed at curtailing antisemitic behavior and speech in the city. Lacing their remarks with profanity, and racial slurs, they set a new low bar for behavior and comments, in a public meeting with children, families, and many Brookhaven neighbors sitting stunned in the audience.
They were not in the room; they were too craven to do that. These were the cowards of hate and anonymity. But I would also wager that my grandmother was correct that none of those speakers would have the courage to hate that way in person, or up close. Public comment via Zoom should also fade away as the pandemic became endemic.
I still miss Mary Crane, and Bud, who each taught me so many valuable life lessons. And to quote another favorite newspaperman and columnist, Lewis Grizzard, for those anonymous Zoomers and others who can only speak in extremes and veiled threats, Brookhaven, Georgia, and most of metro Atlanta probably really are not going to be your cup of tea. So, as Mr. Grizzard and my favorite airline always used to say, "Delta is ready when you are!"
