Shooting, Protests Test Atlanta’s Image Of Black Prosperity

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June 20th, 2020

In this Saturday, June 13, 2020, file photo, “RIP Rayshard” is spray-painted on a sign as flames engulf a Wendy’s restaurant during protests in Atlanta. The restaurant was where Rayshard Brooks was shot and killed by police the previous evening following a struggle in the restaurant’s drive-thru line. The deadly police shooting soon after the city erupted in fiery demonstrations protesting police brutality have cast a harsh spotlight on cracks in Atlanta’s reputation for Black prosperity in politics and business.

Brynn Anderson / Associated Press

Updated June 20 at 7:03 p.m.

Police cars burned in the streets of Atlanta as protesters smashed windows and spray-painted graffiti outside CNN headquarters. Even during the national outcry over police brutality and racial injustice, Chassidy Evans struggled to understand why her hometown, with its legacy of peaceful resistance, had erupted in chaos.

Then her uncle, Rayshard Brooks, was shot in the back by a white Atlanta police officer after fighting a drunken driving arrest and trying to run away. The turbulent protests ignited by the May 25 police killing of another Black man, George Floyd in Minneapolis, had barely simmered down when Brooks was killed last week.

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