In his sermons, Martin Luther King Jr often made reference to his daughter Yolanda Denise seeing him off to the Atlanta airport before work trips and passing an amusement center called Funtown along the way. When she’d ask if he could take her some day, he’d always find a way to change the subject because he couldn’t bear telling her that she “couldn’t go to Funtown because of the color of her skin”.
When they were first built in the early 20th century, amusement parks were not intended for Black families. And while, 70 years on, King’s dream of seeing Black and white children play “as sisters and brothers” has mostly come true, the past week offered a stark reminder of the progress there still is to make.
