If you’d like to look through the old newspapers yourself they can be found and searched at the following link. I can attest I’ve made my best faith effort to find General Lee as part of Lee Street. What I found is the pioneer founders of this town that brought the first electric generation plant. These are absolutely the kind of people that STEM makes. Pioneers. https://gahistoricnewspapers.galileo.usg.edu/lccn/sn89053243/
Where is Lee’s Mill you may ask? On the Flint River. https://www.georgiatrust.org/places-in-peril/lees-mill-on-the-flint-river/
I’ve included the council meeting where this “issue” came up. As you’ll notice there’s no such history lesson as mine in the city’s presentation.
Is the city going to change the name of Patillo Road as well? After all, our District Attorney is named Patillo.
Stop making up history as you go along. But most importantly, and I can’t stress it enough. Stop stepping on my toes trying to manipulate the price of real estate in my neighborhood. Setting your misuse of sentiment aside. That is all the proponents of this lie on the council are doing. Wasting a pile of money for a gesture already made downtown years ago. There are over 1000 roads named after MLK Jr. in the US. A study of these roads now shows, “redlining is alive and well in America.” I’d rather me and my neighbors not get redlined, thank you very much.
You have an amphitheater and a STEM school. But one side won’t be named for a musician. And the other side wont be named for a mathematician or engineer. That doesn’t make any sense in the context of branding the downtown.
In the meeting before these false claims of General Lee in our midst the city entered into a years long agreement with the federal government for affordable housing. They played a video of Fox 5 covering reasons people stay in extended stay hotels. Then at the very next meeting they decide to throw money at a statue of “Daddy King” and a road renaming. If you were serious about any of the things you pay lip service to, there wouldn’t be another concert, statue or name cast in brass until you solve some of these problems.
I’ll leave you guys with a clipping from 1891 that echoes my sentiment now. Thanks for reading.
