Mayor Franklin speaks at annual Holmes-Hunter lecture

If you didn’t know, I love Shirley Franklin. She’s classy and sassy, and runs a tight ship as mayor of the City of Atlanta. So, of course I was excited when I found out that she was going to be the speaker at the annual Holmes-Hunter lecture which celebrates Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton Holmes, the first African American students to enroll at UGA.

However, my excitement was short lived when…I realized that I couldn’t attend the lecture because I had class. In all honesty, I was expecting my history professor to cancel class (seriously, it’s a class that studies the historical survey of African-American political thought). But, she didn’t…so I sat in class wondering what Shirley Franklin talked about, while making cynical observations about the leadership style of Marcus Garvey (which is another discussion for another time).

Nevertheless, while I consistently and confidently believe that UGA has a ways to go in its attempt to be a truly inclusive community, I will say that they have done a phenomenal job with programming this year. Andrew Young has come, Shirley Franklin has come, and Elaine Brown is coming. Pretty impressive…and hopefully, they’ll keep up the good work.