The deconstruction of Martin Luther King Sr.’s hometown

Prepare to learn a little bit about Martin Luther King Sr. in the next few months.

Not the son, but the father — who lost that son to an assassin’s bullet in 1968, another son to a swimming pool accident the next year, then saw his wife fall to a gunman in his own church sanctuary in 1974.

Now, Stockbridge city officials would argue, the man who generations knew as “Daddy” King is about to lose his hometown, too.

Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where King Sr. and King Jr. jointly served as pastors, is paying attention. “I think Daddy King is turning over in his grave,” the Rev. Raphael Warnock, Ebenezer’s current pastor, told me this week.

The bitter, racially fraught fight to create a city of Eagles Landing in Henry County, in part by deconstructing the city of Stockbridge, is headed for the courtroom next month.

On July 18, the city of Stockbridge will ask a Henry County Superior Court judge to block two questions on the November ballot ordained by the Legislature.

One question would allow 9,000 of some 28,000 Stockbridge citizens to decide whether to remove themselves from the existing city. A second would determine whether a 17,000-resident city of Eagles Landing should be created from Stockbridge expatriates and adjacent residents in unincorporated Henry County.

One sign of the scorchedearth nature of the battle: One day before Stockbridge’s court date, supporters of Eagles Landing have landed their own session with a judge. One of their arguments will be that local governments are barred by law from participating in

referendum campaigns.

Stockbridge’s attempt to enjoin the referendums by seeking out a judge, they claim, amounts to “interfering with” an election.

Those looking at the larger picture — i.e., people who worry about Buckhead deciding to secede from Atlanta — are already engaged.

Stockbridge currently carries more than $14 million in debt. The removal of a choice area that represents more than half the city’s tax revenue threatens the city’s solvency. Credit rating services have warned that the unprecedented move by the Legislature, allowing the cannibalization of one city to create another, could have statewide implications.

Over the weekend, the Georgia Municipal Association called for an end to the practice. And demanded that any future city splits be required to address specifics that the Eagles Landing/Stockbridge division hasn’t: “Stranded infrastructure, facilities, pension liabilities, outstanding indebtedness and bond obligations.”

Henry County demographics are rapidly changing. African-American voters have begun to dominate. Yet supporters of Eagles Landing say this isn’t about race. About 53 percent of Stockbridge’s voting-age population is black. In the new city of Eagles Landing, black and white voters would enjoy a rough parity.

And indeed, many members of the Eagle’s Landing Country Club, which currently serves as the center of the community, are black — including former GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain. (He hasn’t weighed in on the dispute.)

A Bloomberg article on the origins of the situation, published last week, theorized that a case of Buckhead envy was responsible, quoting Vikki Consiglio, a spokeswoman for the group pushing cityhood for Eagles Landing.

“I wanted to be part of a gated community in a high-end area,” Consiglio said. “Instead, when I come out of the gate, I see a Waffle House and dollar stores.”

But even if property values and economic development are at the root of the Eagles Landing push, its creation could jeopardize the existence of Stockbridge, which was first incorporated in 1895. Only six months ago, Anthony Ford, a retired Army colonel, became the city’s first elected black mayor.

Should Stockbridge lose its court fight, the fight to preserve the city will devolve on Citizens to Keep Stockbridge Together. Arthur Christian, a Fulton County government worker who lives in Stockbridge, heads up the group.

Christian is working on the public argument that will have to be made leading up to November. “I see this as an extreme form of gerrymandering,” he said.

Given that she will be on the November ballot along with Stockbridge’s future, Christian said he hadn’t yet reached out to Stacey Abrams, the Democratic nominee for governor — but he thought that he might. (An emailed inquiry to the Abrams campaign on Tuesday didn’t produce a reply.)

But last Friday, Christian said he did get a commitment from Raphael Warnock, the pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, a position Daddy King held for 44 years, from 1931 to 1975. King Sr. died in 1984.

“The politics of race are inescapable here. You have a city with shifting demographics. African-Americans have assumed much of the leadership,” Warnock said when I reached him this week. “And as soon as we learn to play in such a way as to gain some stake in the game, somebody changes the rules. It’s patently unfair.

“It’s one thing to have a gated community. It’s another thing to essentially have a gated city,” he said. “Although the gates may not be physical, this does represent the kind of balkanization and class stratification that in the end causes both the haves and the have nots to lose.”

While Warnock pledged that Ebenezer will take up Stockbridge’s cause, making Martin Luther King Jr.’s father an effective symbol of the cause could take some work.

Daddy King’s connection to Stockbridge is secure. He grew up there, the grandson of former slaves and son of sharecroppers. He left as a young man, and from his Ebenezer pulpit, paved the way for his son’s work. In 1961, it was King Sr. who helped negotiate with Ivan Allen, the president of Atlanta Chamber of Commerce to desegregate the city’s lunch counters. (Allen would later become mayor.)

In 2015, the city of Stockbridge named a street after King Sr.

But Stockbridge was a city of about 2,000 mostly white residents when Daddy King died. Much of the African-American population surging into Stockbridge and Henry County comes from outside Georgia.

Christian, leader of the Stockbridge citizens group, acknowledged that the King family roots in Henry County are well known only to those “born and bred” in the area.

Warnock, too, appeared to acknowledge that a focus on the larger implications of Stockbridge’s deconstruction might be a stronger message. “The people of Eagle’s Landing need to somehow catch hold of the character of an eagle,” the Ebenezer pastor said. “Eagles see four to five times as well as human beings. And this is a very short-sighted proposal.”