ON BLACK MILLENNIALS IN SEARCH OF THE NEW SOUTH [LitHub]

Over the last few years I’ve been trying to find the “New South” that young Black millennials like me are moving to. That Black Mecca of upwardly mobile Black folk that is so prominent in the Black imagination. But I can’t. I look for it every time I visit the South. Instead of a feeling of freedom and comfort, all I feel is the weight of a past that doesn’t feel so distant. I want to love places like Charlotte, Charleston, Memphis, and of course Atlanta, the place the SNL writer Michael Che called the “Blackest” city in America, but it’s been hard. It’s been even harder after Trump became our president and I see Klan and Nazi rallies and White power signs peppering the region.