There is a difference between moving into the city and moving back home.
Kelli and I did not relocate for trend. We returned for transformation.
I was born in 1976 at Grady Hospital in Atlanta, a proud Grady baby, raised in a working class family in a working class community. Despite the stereotypes people often repeat, I grew up seeing two parent households, loving fathers, and neighbors who cared for one another. Community was not broken. It was bonded.
I started at Center Hill Elementary in kindergarten and attended Grove Park Elementary from first through fifth grade. We later moved to College Park where I attended Love T. Nolan Elementary for sixth grade and Ronald E. McNair Middle School for seventh and eighth grade. I was zoned for Banneker High School but ultimately attended Westlake High School for its math and science magnet program, graduating in 1994. By the time I graduated, I was living back in the city of Atlanta, less than a mile from Frederick Douglass High School, the school I would have attended had we never moved.
Now, decades later, I live back in that same zone.
Back home.
The Sound of Home
Living here now is different from living in Mableton.
There are sirens throughout the day and sometimes late at night. Police. Fire rescue. Ambulances. Occasionally gunshots. There are people walking in the neighborhood at all hours. Some wandering. Some wondering what their next move will be.
But it is still home.
And home is not something you abandon when it gets complicated.
What Is Gentrification
Gentrification is the process by which higher income residents move into historically lower income neighborhoods, often leading to rising property values, cultural shifts, and the displacement of longtime residents.
When we moved back, I told Kelli that I felt like we might be part of the gentrification.
She made it clear to me, and I felt the conviction immediately.
You are not gentrifying. You are coming back home.
There is a difference between replacing a community and restoring one.
Reframing Inner City
For years, the phrase inner city has been used as coded language.
Originally, inner cities were urban centers where poverty became concentrated because of redlining, discriminatory housing policies, and economic disinvestment. Black families were restricted to certain neighborhoods. Resources left. Wealth fled. Opportunity narrowed.
Over time, inner city stopped meaning geography and started meaning Black.
Ironically, before concentrated Black poverty defined inner cities, many of those neighborhoods were white. White flight moved out. Now capital is moving back in. Property once considered low value is now seen as prime investment.
The question becomes who benefits from the comeback.
That is why it matters that sons and daughters of the city come back too.
From Success to Significance
In 1998, shortly after my playing career in the Chicago Cubs organization ended, Kelli and I started Diamond Directors in Marietta. Our mission was to provide the blueprint of success for diamond sport athletes.
Through that work, we helped develop over 40 Major League players, including:
- Jason Heyward
- Andrew McCutchen
- Dexter Fowler
- Pete Alonso
- Andruw Jones
Diamond Directors built success.
But in 2007, everything shifted.
A white man named Stan Conway, whose son Davis I was training in the suburbs, challenged me. He asked why I was not doing more for Black youth in the city of Atlanta, especially when Black male high school graduation rates were low and the number of African Americans in Major League Baseball was declining.
That conviction became calling.
In 2007, we launched L.E.A.D. Center For Youth with a mission to advance equity and well being through youth sports.
Since then:
- Over 6,000 Black boys served
- Over 26 million dollars invested
- DEVELOPMENT is our acronym, which stands for a deliberate effort to value and empower learners to obtain personal mastery and excellence through nurturing and athletic training
- Pillars of Excellence are athletics, academics, civic engagement, and commerce
Diamond Directors was success.
L.E.A.D. became significance.
Success is what you get. Significance is what you give.
Three Reasons Moving Back Is a Solution
- Ownership Protects Legacy
When people born and raised in the city return, we protect cultural memory. We know the streets. We know the schools. We know what this block meant before redevelopment plans and rising property values.
Returning residents anchor neighborhoods so they are not erased.
Ownership creates stability.
- Wealth Building Should Include Us
As property values rise, equity rises.
If only outsiders purchase homes and property, wealth transfers away from the original community. But when native sons and daughters buy property, invest, and build businesses, generational wealth circulates internally.
We are not just occupying space. We are reclaiming equity.
- Proximity Increases Responsibility
It is one thing to drive into the city to serve. It is another thing to live there.
Now the sirens wake me up.
Now the young boys I coach ride bikes past my house.
Now Frederick Douglass High School is my zoned school again.
Impact feels different when it is next door.
Bankhead. Grove Park. Home.
For years, we worked in the city from outside the city. Since 2007 we have poured time, resources, and relationships into Atlanta’s youth.
Now we do that work from the heart of Bankhead and Grove Park.
Not as outsiders.
Not as saviors.
But as sons and daughters of the soil.
If you were born and raised in the city and left for opportunity, perhaps the solution is not permanent distance.
Perhaps the solution is return.
City and solution share more than letters.
They share responsibility.
I am a son of Atlanta. I am Black. And I am home.
And being home is not gentrification.
It is stewardship.
photo credit @ismooth