By Kelly Hill
Kathryn Johnston was no fool. She knew all too well the danger that came with living in her northwest Atlanta neighborhood. It was a community where drugs were sold in plain sight, and hearing gunfire was an unnoteworthy occurrence. It was less than a year before Ms. Johnston’s death on Nov. 21, 2006, that an elderly friend had been savagely attacked by an intruder, and to many, things only seemed to be getting worse.
In Ms. Johnston’s mind, the iron bars that safeguarded her home were hardly enough to protect her in a community that seemed to be deteriorating around her. She was determined not to be a victim, so she kept a gun.
Ms. Johnston and I had become fast friends during the summer of 2003. It was then that my aunt who was visiting from Philadelphia introduced me to Ms. Johnston, who had relocated to Atlanta nearly 20 years earlier.
Our relationship was a genuine one. With her never having any children and me having no relatives in the area, we both filled a very natural space in each others’ life. At 92 years old, Ms. Johnston was remarkably independent and sharper than most people a fraction of her age. She was honest to a fault and easily the most authentic person I’d ever met.
I received news of the shooting late that Tuesday night when a friend called and told me to turn on the television. There, on the 10 p.m. news, lit up by flashbulbs and police lights was Ms. Johnston’s house. What I saw was incomprehensible.
I knew Ms. Johnston owned a gun. The .38 caliber revolver that she kept by her bedside had been a constant source of ribbing between us. But what I couldn’t understand was why she would shoot at three Atlanta police officers or why they’d be at her house serving a search warrant.
As I stood at the crime scene that night watching APD officers stream in and out of Ms. Johnston’s home, I felt an overwhelming sense of powerlessness. I knew the police had made a terrible mistake. But, I also knew that Ms. Johnston lived in one of the poorest, most crime-ridden neighborhoods in the entire city – the type of place where the gunning down of an old lady could be easily explained away.
The details of police corruption that surfaced in the weeks following the initial allegations sent shockwaves across the country and was reported in places as far away as Japan and Dubai. Even in a time when people have become largely desensitized to violence, the killing and subsequent framing of a 92-year-old woman seemed beyond the pale. The story was so sordid and scandalous that it seemed more befitting of a New York Times best-selling crime novel or HBO original series.
However, there was nothing scripted about what happened to Kathryn Johnston on that day. And unfortunately for her, the consequences were very real. In the year since the tragedy occurred, there have been numerous missteps by city officials, yet the most disappointing reaction has come from the chief executive herself.
From the very beginning, Mayor Shirley Franklin chose to handle the Johnston slaying as a matter of public safety rather than community crisis. By deflecting the management of the tragedy to the police chief, a person in whom many Atlantans had little confidence, she created a leadership vacuum that has only served to exacerbate community-government relations.
The behavior by the mayor seems uncharacteristic at best. After all, she prides herself on taking on the toughest problems of local governance. However, when it came to dealing with one of the most egregious examples of modern-day police abuse, the mayor was nowhere to be found. The few times that the mayor did comment on the tragedy, she seemed more concerned with avowing her political support for the police chief than with fostering reconciliation and restoring public confidence. It’s almost as if the death of Kathryn Johnston presented a political inconvenience for the mayor, a blot on her near spotless career during the twilight of her administration.
In many ways, the tragedy of 933 Neal St. feeds into a larger narrative – one of two Atlantas. Despite that Atlanta has experienced 30 years of minority control, there remains a large segment of the population that continues to go unrepresented.
Whether the subject is the closing of Grady Memorial Hospital, failing public schools, disappearing affordable housing, the state of the city’s homeless, gentrification and displacement, or police abuse and corruption, the issues of poor people rarely find their way to the top of the agenda.
While these are all issues that most major cities face, you somehow expect things to be just a little different in Atlanta. After all, it’s the home of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and civil rights – confronting social injustice is supposed to be a part of what we do. But unfortunately for Ms. Johnston, she was slain in the “City Too Busy to Hate,†when the priority was all Beltlines and sewer lines and little else.
As Atlanta continues to change, it seems inevitable that the city will finally shake itself loose of the post-civil rights-era dynasty, which despite the association has had very little to do with civil rights since. Hopefully, the next generation of leaders will project a vision of leadership that extends beyond building bigger and shinier buildings, to show a modicum of concern for the people who live their lives in the shadows of downtown skyscrapers and high-rises – those who live in places where little old ladies still sleep with guns by their beds.
Kelly Hill is a graduate student at Emory University and was Kathryn Johnston’s close friend.
