Many years ago, Ronald Monroe had an easy answer to the question, Where is your family from?

He could pull out a map of Atlanta, place his finger on downtown, and move it west toward Northside Drive. On the left side of the street, he’d see Vine City, the neighborhood where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. raised his children. On the right, Monroe would find the Black working-class community of Lightning.

Lightning has been largely erased from Atlanta’s story. When asked today where his family is from, Monroe must think carefully, for the answer is far more complicated than it used to be.

Five years ago, journalists Max Blau and Dustin Chambers began speaking with former Lightning community members like Monroe about their old neighborhood. Their interviews were compiled into an oral history that was published with the Bitter Southerner in January 2019, right before Atlanta hosted the 53rd annual Super Bowl. Since then, Blau and Chambers—along with designer Sarah Lawrence and former Lightning resident Rosalyn Dupree- Tullis—have worked to preserve the fading memories of the neighborhood. They have interviewed more community members, compiled photos, and uncovered lost documents about the neighborhood. Their work together is being featured here as an art installation for the first time.

Lightning, Struck is more than just a historic record of a community that no longer exists. It is an examination of the policy choices made over many decades that led to the neighborhood’s destruction. It is a meditation on the trauma of losing the geographic and cultural ties of home. And it is an exploration of how justice might be delivered for those who have seen their home destroyed.

Lightning Day is a day to support the Lightning, Struck project that’s part of the JUSTICE exhibition at Science Gallery Atlanta. We welcome members of the Lightning Community to visit the exhibition, as well as invite the public to hear perspectives on Lightning from those community members. Here’s more information on Lightning, Struck: https://www.lightning-struck.com/