Georgia State University Magazine, Spring 2021

SPRING ’21 | MAGAZINE.GSU.EDU

At its new baseball and softball park, Georgia State will honor Atlanta legend and baseball great Hammerin’ HANK AARON on the hallowed ground where he smashed the all-time home run record.

Give Today,

Help Students Tomorrow Students are at the heart of everything we do at Georgia State University.

Thanks to many generous donors, Georgia State was able to provide meaningful funding support to more students in more ways than ever over the last 12 months.

3,800+

PANTHER RETENTION GRANTS KEPT STUDENTS ENROLLED AT GEORGIA STATE

1,600+

EMERGENCY GRANTS PROVIDED SUPPORT TO STUDENTS FACING FINANCIAL HARDSHIP

3,400+

SCHOLARSHIPS WERE AWARDED

BY THE GEORGIA STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION

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NEW ENDOWED SCHOLARSHIPS WERE ESTABLISHED THROUGH THE MATCH

With your help, we can continue providing what Panthers need to succeed Visit giving.gsu.edu/givenow to make a gift or return the enclosed envelope.

CONTENTS

16 ROUNDING HOME

22 A LIFT UP

When Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s home run record April 8, 1974, he did it at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium. As Georgia State ushers in a new era of Panthers baseball and softball where the stadium once stood, it will honor Aaron’s place in the annals of Atlanta and baseball history.

With the resources of Georgia State’s Learning, Income and Family Transformation (LIFT) Program behind them, State Farm Scholars at Perimeter College are graduating at remarkably high rates and proving all students can succeed with the right kind of support.

28 MUSICAL MEMORY Re-releasing hard-to-find recordings of traditional folk music from around the world, Lance (MBA ’03) and April Ledbetter’s (B.A. ’01) Grammy-winning Dust-to-Digital record label is preserving old music for new ears.

Though Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium was imploded in 1997, a portion of the outfield wall over which Hank Aaron smacked his record-breaking 715th home run remains.

Following Aaron’s death Jan. 22, a memorial sprang up at the historic site.

COVER ILLUSTRATION BY GOLDI GOLD; PHOTO BY CAROLYN RICHARDSON

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FROM THE PRESIDENT

MAKING OUR CAMPUSES COME ALIVE Georgia State is preparing for the return of students, faculty and staff for the fall semester.

“Working together, as we’ve done during the past year, we’ll emerge from this pandemic a stronger, more resourceful and confident university.”

HARD TO BELIEVE, but it was over a year ago that the coronavirus pandemic began to change the daily lives of people around the world. It’s been a challenging year for everyone and it has required us to dramatically alter our operating model in order to protect people’s health while also doing our best to educate and serve our students, continue to conduct important research and engage with our communities.

Our strategy to address the pandemic has proven to be highly successful. I’m grateful to our community who are firmly committed to staying healthy and protecting the health of others. I especially appreciate the understanding and resilience of our students, who have had to endure a vastly changed university experience.

We’ve emerged from the last two semesters with renewed confidence in our ability to overcome any obstacles that confront us. Georgia State’s trademark resolve and perseverance have never been more fully on display.

We’re looking ahead with optimism and expectations of a more normal semester this coming fall. Planning has begun for a fall semester where on-campus activities and in-person learning will once again be the norm. While we will take important lessons learned from the past year to provide more

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online opportunities for education and service than in pre-pandemic years, we know students want to be back on campus and benefitting from all the opportunities a Georgia State education provides.

Given the widespread availability of vaccines and the success we have had in preventing the coronavirus from spreading on our campuses, we intend to open in the fall with a full complement of in-person classes. We also intend to have a fully populated residential community and campuses that provide the usual student services, activities, events and recreational opportunities.

As always, we’ll be monitoring the pandemic and implementing our plans based on the guidance we receive from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Georgia Department of Public Health and the University System of Georgia. We are acutely aware that the pandemic is not yet over and that we must therefore remain vigilant and ready to adapt should circumstances warrant changing plans or operations. Health and safety remain the top priorities in our planning.

We’re vaccinating members of our university community following the guidelines set by the Georgia Department of Public Health. The vaccines have proven

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to be safe and effective, and they will be key in making our campuses as safe as possible.

Our ability to return to normal operations in the fall will be dependent on having our university community vaccinated against COVID-19, and I have strongly encouraged every member of the Georgia State family to be vaccinated.

As we get ready for the fall, it is vital we all continue to do our part in protecting each other. Continue to wear masks. Get tested. Respect and honor social distancing guidelines. These are fundamental and essential behaviors that will help us control the spread of the coronavirus.

I know the university community looks forward to a return to our campuses in the fall and the vibrancy, energy and camaraderie that make campus life so special. Working together, as we’ve done during the past year, we’ll emerge from this pandemic a stronger, more resourceful and confident university.

Sincerely,

Mark Becker President

ILLUSTRATION BY ANDY FRIEDMAN

CLASS NOTES Your classmates are a successful bunch.

From mayors and authors to business owners and judges, there are Panthers out there doing fantastic things. Got a promotion? A new addition to the family?

Go ahead, brag a little. Post your good news and read about your fellow alumni at news.gsu.edu/class-notes. You can share Class Notes through Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

A LIFE-CHANGING MOMENT Four years ago, Keyanna Johnson (B.A. ’21) was one of a handful of seniors at Southwest DeKalb High School who were surprised — on camera — with the news they were the first recipients of the State Farm Scholarship at Georgia State’s Perimeter College. Visit magazine.gsu.edu to watch an emotional video of Johnson as she relives that experience and hear how she’s now on track to earn her bachelor’s degree at the Atlanta Campus.

Tiffany P. Porter (MBA ’09) Tiffany P. Porter was elected to the Office of the Tax Commissioner for Gwinnett County (Ga.), the first African American elected to the post in the county’s history. Prior to being elected tax commissioner, Porter was the first African American judge in Duluth Municipal Court and founded two law firms.

In addition to serving on the bench and practicing law, Porter appears weekly as a legal analyst for the Court TV network.

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Spring 2021 • Vol. 12 • No. 1 Publishers Don Hale, Andrea Jones Executive Editor William Inman (M.H.P. ’16) Contributors Michael Davis (B.A. ’03), Ray Glier, Henry Lake, Charles McNair, Jennifer Rainey Marquez Creative Director Renata Irving Art Director Matt McCullin Contributing Illustrators Goldi Gold, Andy Friedman, Reid Schulz (B.F.A. ’18) Contributing Photographers Meg Buscema, Carolyn Richardson, Steven Thackston Send address changes to: Georgia State University Gifts and Records P.O. Box 3963 Atlanta, GA 30302-3963 Fax: 404-413-3441 email: update@gsu.edu Send story ideas and letters to the editor to: William Inman, editor, Georgia State University Magazine P.O. Box 3999 Atlanta, GA 30302-3999 email: winman@gsu.edu Georgia State University Magazine is published two times each year by Georgia State University. The magazine is dedicated to communicating and promoting the high level of academic achievement, research, scholarship, teaching and service at Georgia State University, as well as the outstanding accomplishments of its alumni and the intellectual, cultural, social and athletic endeavors of its vibrant and diverse student body. © 2021 Georgia State University

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ON CAMPUS / LEADERSHIP

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G E O R G I A STATE U N I V E R S I T Y M A G A Z I N E S P R I N G ’2 1

THE END OF AN ERA President Mark Becker has led Georgia State during the most transformative time in its history. He will step down in June after 12 years at the helm. Reflecting his vision of the modern public research university, Becker led Georgia State’s emergence as the national leader in student success initiatives, built one of the fastest-growing research enterprises in the country and made Georgia State a major catalyst for the revitalization of downtown Atlanta.

Visit magazine.gsu.edu for a photo gallery highlighting his distinguished tenure at Georgia State.

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PROFLIE / ALUMNI

Cities aren’t born smart.

Smart people like Lillie Madali (M.P.A. ’13) make them that way.

THE GEORGIA STATE ALUMNI ASSOCIATION 40 UNDER 40 HONOREE AND DIRECTOR OF ATLANTA’S SMART CITY PROGRAM CHAMPIONS UNIVERSAL ACCESS TO TECHNOLOGY.

BY CHARLES MCNAIR | PHOTO BY STEVEN THACKSTON

illie Madali stepped into a big new job in 2019 as director of Atlanta’s Smart City Program.

She leads efforts to leverage technology that can give Atlanta’s 500,000 residents — and millions of visitors to the city — more efficient operations, faster and better services, and governmental transparency.

“We’re looking for ways to improve daily life using tools, technology and new ideas,” Madali said. “But we’re not running a tech program. We’re focused on the person.

Smart City Atlanta is not about cool, shiny gadgets but rather how people can use tech to make this city special.”

How cities work matters more than ever in these times of climate disaster, crumbling infrastructure, cybersecurity villains and income inequality.

It’s why Georgia State’s Alumni Association honored Madali as one of the university’s most influential and innovative graduates under the age of 40.

Madali’s work has a special focus on using technology to address issues of income equality.

“A commuter in Atlanta can board a train on the south side, ride north 20 minutes and step out where the average annual income is $80,000 higher,” she said. “Smart City is paying attention now to income inequality issues like this by providing access to broadband.”

A 2014 Brookings Institution study strongly suggested an association between

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digital access and income, community health and crime. In an increasingly techdriven world, vulnerable communities without basic digital resources are getting left behind.

Madali knows firsthand the advantages of digital inclusion.

She grew up in south Cobb County, Ga., the daughter of first-generation Filipino immigrants.

“We got our first computer in 1995 when I was in middle school,” she remembers.

“My whole life changed.”

It opened a new world of opportunities for Madali.

“I saw that if I worked hard, I could get into the schools I wanted. I could write my research papers. I could advocate for my parents who didn’t speak English well.

As a middle-schooler, I wrote letters to magistrate court on their behalf,” she said.

“It was one of the things I had to do as a first-generation kid.”

Madali says the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbates conditions for already vulnerable communities.

“Places that lack access to broadband now lack access to education, too,” she said, “because school is virtual, and jobs have gone online. But if you don’t have access, how do you work? Even many government services are now online. The pathway to a more equitable Atlanta is through broadband access.”

Madali and her team can see progress.

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Using data analytics and geospatial information, Madali worked with a team of graduate students from the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies to pinpoint areas of Atlanta with lower rates of broadband access. These data will guide interventions like free public Wi-Fi and recreation center upgrades to bridge the digital divide.

Madali, who once performed for President Barack Obama as a DJ (she still performs around town as DJ Lillie Smalls and co-hosts a podcast called “The Quick and Swift”), entered public service first with the Mayor’s Office of Innovation Delivery and Performance, and then WorkSource Atlanta, the city’s workforce development agency.

In the Department of City Planning, she simplified commercial permit processes with the launch of OpenCounter.

The site merged information on 141 commercial permits from six city departments into one central site (ATL Permit Navigator), facilitating more than 3,000 new city projects.

She credits Georgia State for her insights into how to succeed with Smart City Atlanta.

“My master’s program was really special,” she said. “Georgia State focused on foundations, giving me a great base for public work. Learning the spirit of the law and the spirit of public service has given me great instincts when I’ve had to make difficult decisions.”

“ We’re not running a tech program. We’re focused on the person.

Smart City Atlanta is not about cool, shiny gadgets but rather how people can use tech to make this city special. ” — Lillie Madali

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ON CAMPUS / ATHLETICS

SERVING WITH PURPOSE As the first student-athlete to receive the Presidential Scholarship, beach volleyball player Bailey Hatchett (B.B.A., B.A. ’22) is a powerhouse on the sand and in the classroom.

BY MICHAEL DAVIS (B.A. ’03) | PHOTO BY CAROLYN RICHARDSON

OLLEYBALL IS A FAMILY TRADITION for Bailey Hatchett. Her mother played indoor and beach volleyball professionally after a collegiate career at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her aunt played at the University of Southern California.

At 6-feet, 2-inches, Hatchett caught the eye of Georgia State beach volleyball coach Beth Van Fleet (B.B.A. ’99, MBA ’19) during her senior year of high school and was offered a scholarship to join the Sandy Panthers for the 2019 season.

But after applying for the university’s Presidential Scholarship, Hatchett’s path to Georgia State changed.

She is the first student-athlete to be awarded the most prestigious academic scholarship at the university, one of just eight Presidential Scholars named in the class of 2022. Receiving the scholarship meant a new set of responsibilities on top of her athletic ones, and a new set of opportunities for service, mentoring, research and community engagement.

But keeping a busy schedule is nothing new for Hatchett, who is pursuing a double major in finance and Spanish. While still in high school in Winston-Salem, N.C., Hatchett had already begun successfully balancing academics, athletics and altruism, often

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joining her mother and grandmother to mentor students in need.

Hatchett earned All-Conference honors and led her high school team to the state semifinals in each of her final three seasons.

Once at Georgia State, Hatchett created her own opportunities to continue serving youth. By developing a partnership between the Honors College and the Athletics Department, Hatchett has gotten teammates involved in local elementary schools as mentors and tutors.

“Serving the community is the most important thing to Bailey,” Van Fleet said. “Where she finds time to do it is beyond me.”

In her two and a half years at Georgia State, Hatchett has been on the president’s list three times and dean’s list twice for her academic performance.

She’s made a mark in the sand as well, with a March 2020 honor as an Institute for Sport & Social Justice PlayMaker of the Month.

A month later, she was named an Arthur Ashe Jr. Sports Scholar by the magazine Diverse: Issues in Higher Education.

As the 2021 season was getting underway, Hatchett said she was looking forward to the excitement and challenges it would bring.

“It really pushes us to manage our time because we’re traveling a lot, but it’s a lot of fun,” she said.

ON CAMPUS / RESEARCH

EARNING TRUST A new Georgia State project aims to understand why some Black Atlantans are hesitant to participate in COVID-19 research.

BY JENNIFER RAINEY MARQUEZ | ILLUSTRATION BY REID SCHULZ (B.F.A. ’18)

BLACK COMMUNITIES ACROSS AMERICA have been devastated by the coronavirus pandemic, with three times the case rates, five times the hospitalization rates and twice the death rates of their white counterparts. Despite being hardest hit by COVID-19, Black people are also underrepresented in COVID-19 research, composing just three percent of vaccine trial enrollees.

What are the barriers that prevent more African Americans from taking part in COVID-19 studies — and what could encourage greater participation? Although there are many compounding factors that account for a lack of representation in research, one is a deep legacy of distrust, said Lisa Diane White, deputy director of SisterLove, a women-led HIV/AIDS and reproductive justice organization based in Atlanta.

“There’s a narrative that Black people have internalized [based on historic mistreatment and exploitation by doctors and scientists], and it makes us afraid,” she said. “Even as a health advocate and educator, when I’m in the doctor’s office, I’m afraid of trying to communicate why I’m sick or hurting.”

SisterLove is the lead community partner in a new Georgia State project to help identify and overcome longstanding obstacles to research participation among Black communities in Atlanta.

“Because these groups are less likely to participate in research, it’s hard to assess the true burden of infection,” said Heather Bradley, principal investigator of the project and

assistant professor of epidemiology in the School of Public Health. “The disparities may be even greater than we realize.”

To guide their efforts, the research team, which includes faculty in epidemiology, psychology and sociology, has convened an advisory board of seven Atlanta-area organizations that are Black-led and serving Black communities around the city.

The advisory board will recruit 50 individuals from various sociodemographic groups to participate in interviews about what might prevent them from participating in COVID-19 serostudies, large-scale surveys that test for the presence of the SARS-CoV-2 antibody through a finger prick or other minimally invasive procedure.

“We’ll ask respondents to either endorse or reject those barriers that came up in the interviews, and start to home in on which factors are most heavily influencing decision-making, and how it differs by things like income, education level, age, gender or country of birth,” Bradley said.

The goal is to come up with recommendations that are tailored to different populations. The team will also work with the advisory board to communicate the findings back to the participating communities.

“Trusted education is culturally relevant. Trusted sources look like people from the community that you’re serving,” said White. “By participating in this project, I’m learning how to be a trusted source.”

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ON CAMPUS / ALUMNI

LIFE-SAVING LOGISTICS David Quintilio (MBA ’03) is senior vice president of healthcare logistics and distribution for UPS Healthcare. His job? To deliver critically important products to the world. ASAP.

BY CHARLES MCNAIR | PHOTO BY MEG BUSCEMA

n Dec. 14, 2020, a driver for United Parcel Service (UPS) pulled into Long Island Jewish Medical Center with a life-saving delivery — the first doses of a new Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine rushed into development to immunize the world against COVID-19.

The center’s director of critical care nursing, Sandra Lindsay, became the first person in the U.S. to receive the vaccine.

“I feel great. I feel hopeful today, relieved,” Lindsay told media. “I hope this marks the beginning to the end of a painful time in our history.”

David Quintilio played a key role in getting that shot into her arm.

Quintilio is senior vice president of healthcare logistics and distribution for UPS Healthcare. It’s a new division of UPS, the world’s largest transportation company, dedicated to the global logistics of healthcare products, including the new COVID-19 vaccines and growing numbers of time- and temperature-sensitive drugs.

Quintilio’s role is the culmination of a 35-year career at UPS. He started with the company in 1986, loading 18-wheelers.

Today, he loads his calendar during long working hours with calls with colleagues and customers around the world.

He and his team design and coordinate supply chains that can quickly transfer medicines and healthcare products among 220 countries and territories where UPS operates.

Quintilio credits his time at the J. Mack Robinson College of Business for helping him develop the skills to create global logistics strategies and solve operational

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challenges anywhere in the world.

“I learned that moving critical initiatives through large organizations was done through relationships,” he said. “I saw it takes a diversity of perspectives and different backgrounds to look at a situation and come to the right solution, not simply the first solution.”

Quintilio works in a healthcare realm where a revolution is taking place before our eyes.

In 2020, for the first time, more than half the best-selling drugs (27 of the top 50) were biologics — medicines, gene therapies and cell therapies developed from living materials. These new treatments mark a distinct evolution from the mass-produced, synthesized drugs of Industrial Age healthcare.

The new COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer, Moderna and other pharmaceutical companies, for example, are biologics.

Flu vaccines are biologics. These protein-based medicines can fight off illnesses themselves, not just their symptoms.

Today’s biologics offer hope to people with afflictions such as various cancers, Crohn’s Disease and diabetes.

Biologics are nearly all temperaturesensitive. Most perform best stored between 2 degrees and 8 degrees Celsius.

(Some require -20C- to -80C-degree storage.) This means a distribution network of temperature-controlled warehouses, coolers and freezers, plus packaging and transport vehicles, plays a critical role in the life cycle of all biologics.

Enter UPS Healthcare. It delivers the new generation of healthcare products,

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“ Adapting a global supply chain to keep people safe from COVID-19 meant we had to throw out a lot of old processes and procedures, and reinvent them at every level. ” — David Quintilio

along with tried-and-true traditional ones.

Quintilio’s work lies here, helping guide design, investment and execution in supply chain infrastructure for emerging biologics.

The task for Quintilio and his team is to receive, store and move healthcare products around the world at a blur. The COVID-19 pandemic has catalyzed urgency and change in healthcare logistics, just as it has transformed much else.

When the pandemic struck, demand surged first for personal protective equipment — masks, sanitizers and test kits. Booming production by existing manufacturers and opportunistic startups drove UPS Healthcare to add 3 million square feet of storage in only a few months.

With vaccines, the transportation system

required an uncompromised cold chain — those temperature-controlled warehouses, coolers and freezers — from the manufacturer’s lab to the patient.

“Adapting a global supply chain to keep people safe from COVID-19 meant we had to throw out a lot of old processes and procedures,” Quintilio said, “and reinvent them at every level.

“We reexamined building solutions, pricing solutions, IT solutions, just everything.

We reduced what had been essentially a sixmonth job finding and building out space, outfitting it and starting operations to only 23 days. That had never been done before.

Some thought it wasn’t even possible.”

Quintilio and crew put up freezer farms in Louisville, Ky., the Netherlands and

other regions. They added coolers and freezers for storage in facilities worldwide, and they optimized shipping routes to create the fastest delivery speeds and greatest integrity. Details as granular as the availability and quantity of dry ice at sites had to be carefully planned.

In all the bustle, Quintilio and his staff never forgot their own first responders — the UPSers on the frontlines handling critical healthcare products.

“The people side — safety — is a fundamental value here,” Quintilio said.

“With all else going on, we implemented more than 70 new processes to keep the virus from spreading through our workforce. Job one was keeping people safe.”

Stephen Hydrick (MBA ’96) works with

Quintilio as vice president of healthcare logistics and distribution. Hydrick is responsible for healthcare distribution operations in North and South America.

He’s worked with Quintilio for nearly 15 years.

“David is a quick study and has the ability to see the bigger picture,” Hydrick said. “That skill set allows him to assess a situation, ask relevant questions and provide direction or recommendations very quickly.”

Hydrick uses the words quick and quickly as he describes Quintilio’s leadership traits. It brings to mind an old saying: Speed kills.

Not in David Quintilio’s world. Speed saves lives.

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ON CAMPUS / Q&A

THE PERSISTENCE OF THE PAST Renowned investigative journalist, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and professor of practice Douglas Blackmon leads Georgia State students to examine some of American history’s most difficult chapters and bring to life the stories of the people who suffered through them.

INTERVIEW BY WILLIAM INMAN (M.H.P. ’16) | PHOTO BY MEG BUSCEMA

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THERE’S AN OLD SAYING THAT “EVERY PERSON DIES TWICE.” The first time, of course, is when the heart stops beating, and the body stops working. The second time is when a person’s name is spoken for the last time.

For Douglas Blackmon, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book “Slavery

by Another Name” and a professor of practice at the Creative Media Industries Institute (CMII) at Georgia State, it’s a big part of his work to keep some of the South’s forgotten, and often mistreated, souls alive.

Blackmon’s students learn research techniques to unearth the lost stories of ordinary people and those whose lives were cut short by practices such as convict leasing — most of whom were Black and poor.

“We try to say their name again,” Blackmon said. “We try to bring these people back to life and restore some of the dignity that was denied them at the end of their lives.”

Blackmon leads the Narrating Justice Project, an initiative at CMII that explores questions of justice through scholarly research. The Narrating Justice Project is collaborating with the Rialto Center for the Arts, GSUTV and CMII to produce “Crucial Conversations,” a television show on Georgia Public Broadcasting (GPB) that discusses issues of racial equity.

A recent episode of “Crucial Conversations” tackled the legacy of the former Chattahoochee Brick Company site.

Beginning in the late 1870s, the company used forced convict labor extensively.

Blackmon says workers — overwhelmingly Black men — were arrested for petty crimes just so they could become laborers at industrial sites such as the brickworks.

The working conditions were dreadful, and many workers died on the grounds.

We spoke with Blackmon about his work, and how his students and program helped to shape the future of the former Chattahoochee Brick Company site.

What brought you to Georgia State?

Well, I’ve worked in Atlanta for the past 25 years. I wrote for The Atlanta Constitution, and I was The Wall Street Journal southeastern bureau chief here.

And when I left the Journal, I spent six years at the University of Virginia where I taught and produced a weekly television show that appeared on about 200

[Public Broadcasting System] channels around the country.

My wife and kids were here in Atlanta, and I essentially commuted from Atlanta to Charlottesville. A few years ago, I decided I wanted to be back in Atlanta full time and was able get involved with Georgia State and CMII. Happily, this has all come together.

The kids at Georgia State are a purposeful group, and I really like that.

It’s a similar situation for you at Georgia State as it was at the University of Virginia. You teach as well as produce a television program?

Yes. One of the classes I teach is called Documenting History. We learn how to find people in the historical record and try to build a picture of them and their lives, and the world that was around them. We focus on obscure people — poor people, and people who had been mistreated by the world during the time they were alive and didn’t leave behind much of a record.

We try to bring them back to life.

And the students really respond to that. It’s also a little traumatic for some because it’s tough subject matter. It’s also hard research, and it can be quite tedious at times. But I think they find it compelling.

Many of my students have a wide range of backgrounds, and often we discover some unfortunate commonalities. I have them examine someone in their own family’s history, and they’re often surprised to discover things about their own families — which can sometimes be uncomfortable.

The television program I’m involved in is called “Crucial Conversations,” and it is a 100-percent Georgia State production that airs on GPB. I’m the moderator, and our goal is to have honest and accessible dialogues about race relations.

What is the significance of the Chattahoochee Brick Company site, and how did your students research it?

The book I wrote, “Slavery by Another Name,” heavily relies on the kind of research I just described, and I wrote about the site in the book.

It’s right here in Atlanta and, sadly, it connects deeply to the city’s history. And it’s a place that I can show students how to discover its record and history.

A lot of people were taken there as

convict laborers. Some had broken the law and deserved punishment, but a lot of people were there because they violated the racial customs of the day and, really, they were arrested to fulfill the labor needs — not because they had done any real harm to society. That went on for a long time there.

It’s a story of a place where bad things happened to people who didn’t deserve it, and whose lives were extinguished way sooner than they should have been.

So, I gave my students the names of people I’ve extracted from the historical record, and then they went and did research on them.

How did the research there influence the decision of Norfolk Southern, the rail company that leases the land, to change its mind to build on the site?

Well, the site has been abandoned for decades, and recently Norfolk Southern acquired the land and they were looking to build a big facility there. Some concerned neighbors reached out to me about it, one of whom is Donna Stephens (B.A. ’97), a Georgia State grad.

So, I thought the significance of the site would be a great topic for “Crucial Conversations,” and I invited Donna to take part in the program.

I then reached out to Norfolk Southern, and I made it clear we were interested in their honest view on all of this, and they agreed to come on. An attorney for Norfolk Southern, Vanessa Sutherland, said during the show that the company wanted to be sensitive to these issues, and that they wanted to memorialize the site. A couple weeks later, they stopped work there completely.

I’m quite proud that Georgia State and its students’ involvement has helped bring this to pass.

This is an important part of our history that has not been honestly talked about.

And we need to talk about it. The research and the show created an opportunity to have these discussions, and it’s now becoming known that my students are identifying the victims from out there and breathing life back into their memories.

Visit magazine.gsu.edu for an in-depth feature story about Blackmon and his students, and their work helping to uncover the history of the Chattahoochee Brick Company site.

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As Georgia State expands its footprint with a new baseball and softball complex at the site of the former Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, it will uplift the surrounding neighborhood while honoring the history of the ballpark — the location of HANK AARON’S home run heard round the world.

BY RAY GLIER | ILLUSTRATION BY GOLDI GOLD

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There’s an air of invincibility around Hank Aaron and his 715th home run — the one that bumped Babe Ruth from the top line of the record book.

For more than 60 years, Aaron was a larger-than-life hero and an institution in Atlanta. Through baseball, he managed to attract and unite the city’s Black and white populations, a feat that was remarkable in the South in the 1970s. Aaron was a portrait of courage and humility, reasons his legacy will never be swept into the city’s historical dustbin.

But there’s another reason Aaron’s story will endure: Caretakers, like Georgia State University President Mark Becker, are continuing the work of preserving his achievements.

When talk of a housing development planned for the site of the old Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium surfaced, Becker took a stand. To him, the idea that the very dirt where Aaron hammered out his historic homer could ultimately be covered up by someone’s toilet was abhorrent. Becker felt he had a duty to see to it that the property would be developed in concert with the history that was made there.

“One of the greatest moments in baseball history happened right there. We decided we were going to find a way to bring baseball back to that site, and we never wavered,” he says.

Today, Georgia State is planning for the storied setting to become the home of its baseball and softball

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programs, which Becker says the Panthers will use to “immortalize” Aaron and his game-changing hit on April 8, 1974. Plans call for the majestic bronze statue erected in Aaron’s honor in 1982 to be relocated from the plaza in front of the Center Parc Credit Union Stadium (formerly Turner Field) to the baseball and softball stadium complex.

The new ballparks will also honor the place where the Atlanta Braves won their first and only World Series championship in 1995. The team moved into AtlantaFulton County Stadium from Milwaukee in 1966 and called it home for three decades before moving across the street to Turner Field after Atlanta hosted the 1996 Olympics. Turner Field had been constructed for the Olympic Games, then repurposed for the Braves, who played there until 2016, making way for Georgia State to convert the facility, yet again, into the home of Panthers football.

PRESERVING THE PAST “I’m a math geek by training, but I’ve always loved history,” Becker says. “Particularly in a city like Atlanta, which has a reputation for not necessarily paying attention to its history, when you have an opportunity like we

A rendering of the new Georgia State baseball and softball complex looking north toward downtown. The plans call for the incorporation of the Hank Aaron Wall, the section of the outfield fence left standing after the Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium was torn down in 1997. The Hank Aaron statue, now standing in front of Center Parc Stadium, will also be relocated to the complex.

have to honor Hank Aaron, you want to do it.”

Aaron died on Jan. 22.

“It’s just heartbreaking that when we open our facility, Hank won’t be there,” Becker says.

The details of the stadium complex are still being worked out, and the plan is for Aaron’s statue to be a centerpiece in recognizing the history that Hammerin’ Hank and the Atlanta Braves made at the site.

The plans for the stadium complex, which will include a baseball stadium and a separate softball stadium, are part of a larger vision Becker has for the 67 acres south of Interstate 20, which Georgia State purchased in 2017.

He needed to find a home for the university’s football program with the demolition of the Georgia Dome on the horizon and saw a huge benefit to bringing baseball and softball in from its outpost nine miles south of campus to create “an athletics precinct.”

“The Braves did us a favor when they left the one parcel large enough to realize our dreams,” Becker said.

Becker and Georgia State Athletics Director Charlie Cobb share the same concept for Panther Athletics to play a part in preserving Atlanta sports history.

“It’s been part of the vision in the repurposing of the football stadium to honor the memory of the Olympics.

It’s the same with the baseball complex being in

proximity to the old Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, Hank Aaron’s 715th home run and the World Series win,” Cobb says. “It’s Georgia State being part of the fabric of the city, of downtown and its history. We’re building a baseball stadium to help our programs be successful, but we couldn’t completely do this if we weren’t honoring the Braves, Hank Aaron and the legacy of what we have.”

ANCHORING A COMMUNITY The goal is to achieve more than an athletics foothold, Cobb says. It’s also to nurture the ethos of Georgia State, which is about diversity and opportunity. The university annually graduates more African American students than any other nonprofit institution in the country. To continue that work, the school wanted to establish a lasting presence in the Summerhill community around Center Parc Stadium and the diverse enclaves on the city’s south side, where many of these students live.

“All of our athletic teams represent the diversity of the university,” Cobb says. “The opportunity for kids from all backgrounds to use baseball as an opportunity to get a college education and to better themselves

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HOME OF THE PANTHERS Georgia State is building an 8,000-seat multiuse convocation center a short walk north of Center Parc Stadium and adjacent to the baseball and softball site. It will house the university’s men’s and women’s basketball programs and be a site for major events, like commencements.

would resonate with anyone, especially those who understand the legacy of what Hank Aaron brought to Atlanta. For kids to have the ability to play baseball in a first-class facility, get an education and create a better life is a real simple message.”

For many residents of Summerhill, the two previous stadiums — Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium (1966-96) and Turner Field (1997-2016) — were outliers. With them came acres of asphalt parking lots, which sat as empty wastelands most of the year. Community members never felt attached to the venues, nor did they feel they benefitted economically from them.

That’s why Becker and Cobb want to create a partnership among Georgia State, its stadiums and neighboring residents.

“The goal from the beginning was to do something to lift the area, and at the same time achieve our goals of having an athletics department that can compete at the highest levels,” says Becker. “We don’t want to put up walls and fences to separate us from the city.

So, we are developing an athletics precinct at the same time our partners are catalyzing residential, retail and commercial development in a neighborhood that has been a desert.”

Becker said Georgia State has increased the number of employees and students who come from the neighborhoods around the stadiums.

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Tim Kellison, an associate professor in the College of Education & Human Development and a national expert on stadium design in urban settings, says Becker’s vision for the area is appropriate.

“Some mistakes we’ve seen in other cities or regions have been an unwillingness to look back and to embrace the history of the local community. In many ways, I’ve seen projects that have tried to erase that history,” Kellison says. “It would be a grave mistake to ignore that and not celebrate the many historic successes there.

Kellison points to new commercial development along nearby Georgia Avenue, including shops, restaurants and a brewpub.

“My impression is that they are serving a new community that is emerging in that area,” Kellison says.

“There’s great potential in the Georgia State project and stadium development to respond to the needs of the community that is already there.”

Summerhill laid claim to a flourishing community before the construction of neighboring Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium wiped out whole blocks of homes in the 1960s. Kellison said being conscious of what came before the stadiums is key to Georgia State’s acceptance in the area today.

“We are responding to the history of Hank Aaron and his legacy, but there is a much wider legacy in the community that is equally important in many ways

to creating a thriving community — not just with the student population, but with the people who live next door,” Kellison says.

Building signs and banners proclaiming the area “Summerhill” are on many of the renderings provided

by Carter, the developer partnering with Georgia State.

Right down the middle of the neighborhood, binding it all together, is Hank Aaron Drive.

When construction gets underway at the new ballpark complex, Georgia State will pay homage to the great Hammerin’ Hank, refreshing his memory through physical details. But the university will also celebrate him by instilling an Aaron-like culture in its own baseball program.

CONTINUING A LEGACY Georgia State Head Baseball Coach Brad Stromdahl says he and the Panthers met Aaron in 2007, when Stromdahl was an assistant coach. Aaron told the story

of being a young boy lugging blocks of ice upstairs with metal grips. He said it strengthened his forearms for bashing home runs, but it also built his work ethic.

“What I’ve always taken with me through all the teams that we’ve had is really that same hardhat, lunch bucket-type of attitude of Hank Aaron,” Stromdahl says. “‘Come to work.’ It’s our mantra for how we play the game every single day.”

Georgia State’s ambitious plans will help ensure the story of Aaron, and the significance of No. 715 will be renewed as tourists, city dwellers and neighbors walk up to the statue to admire Aaron’s corkscrew figure and the home run flying off his bat.

“When our coaches recruit young men and young women to play baseball and softball, to be able to recruit them to a place of history gives them a sense that the game is larger than just them,” Becker says. “You need to fit into that history, and for the young men and women who will play baseball and softball at Georgia State, that will be really cool.”

“ We’re building a baseball stadium to help

our programs be successful, but we couldn’t completely do this if we weren’t honoring the Braves, Hank Aaron and the legacy of what we have.”

— CHARLIE COBB, GEORGIA STATE ATHLETICS DIRECTOR

PHOTO BY CAROLYN RICHARDSON

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PROOF POSITIVE

Four years ago, a group of 40 high school seniors from low-income backgrounds received the State Farm Scholarship at Georgia State’s Perimeter College. For many, it was the only way they could go to college. Now, they’re earning degrees at remarkably high rates, demonstrating that, with the right supports, all students can graduate.

BY MICHAEL DAVIS (B.A. ’03) | PHOTOS BY STEVEN THACKSTON

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Keyanna Johnson reacts to news in 2017 (left) that she’ll be one of Perimeter College’s first State Farm Scholars. Four years later (right) she’s ready to graduate from Georgia State with a bachelor’s degree in political science.

As a senior at Southwest DeKalb High School in 2017, Keyanna Johnson (B.A. ’21) wasn’t sure she should go to college.

It would take time. It would take money. She’d watched both of her parents and her older sister earn degrees and certificates only to work in jobs wholly unrelated to the educations they’d received.

And there were other factors at play to make Johnson’s path to college a bit less likely. Her school was underperforming at the time, with a number of issues flagged for improvement on that year’s College and Career Ready Performance Index, a state report card on a host of quality indicators. Of the 299 members of her senior class, more than a quarter didn’t graduate, according to Georgia Department of Education data. And Black students, who make up the vast majority of the school population, weren’t meeting expectations on end-of-course tests in algebra, geometry, biology and physical science.

“I was trying to figure out if I was going to go to college or if I wasn’t going to go to college,” Johnson says. “I didn’t want to spend all of this money to not get a degree, or to get a degree in something I may not want to do.”

One day during Johnson’s senior year, an adviser handed out information on the State Farm® Scholarship at Georgia State’s Perimeter College.

What did it have to offer? As much as $4,000 a year in financial assistance. Leadership training and workshops on money management and resume writing. Mentoring opportunities in local high schools. Personalized academic advisement. A network of fellow students to lean on. Oh, and an associate degree that says “Georgia State University” with a direct path to a bachelor’s degree program on the Atlanta Campus, should she choose to pursue one. (Hint: She did. She’s majoring in political science.)

“When I got the scholarship, I kind of felt like, at least for two years, some of my problems had been solved,” Johnson says. “It removed a weight from my shoulders and gave me

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the time to figure out what it was that I actually wanted to do.”

Johnson was among the initial cohort of 40 selected for the State Farm Scholarship in 2017. Aimed at students from more modestly resourced schools — with students from low-income and minority backgrounds who are often the first in their families to go to college — the scholarship is part of Georgia State’s Learning, Income and Family Transformation (LIFT) Program, which the State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company helped fund with a $14.5 million gift to Georgia State.

But the story of LIFT really starts two years earlier.

CONSOLIDATING SUCCESS By 2015, Georgia State had made a name for itself with data-driven strategies to boost student achievement on its Atlanta Campus. It was using predictive analytics to flag an army of advisers to potential hiccups in a student’s path toward a degree. Advisers were reaching out to struggling students instead of waiting for students to come to them.

A summer academy was helping to smooth the transition from high school to college, micro grants were helping students bridge gaps in their finances and a chatbot was helping to answer a host of questions about financial aid, registration and other topics.

And it was working.

In January 2015, the state’s Board of Regents, which oversees Georgia’s public colleges and universities, announced plans to merge Georgia State University with what was then Georgia Perimeter College, a two-year school, creating the

state’s largest university with an enrollment of more than 50,000 students. That merger was completed in 2016 with the hope that the special sauce Georgia State was using to boost graduation rates and erase equity gaps based on race, ethnicity and income would translate to improvement in Perimeter College’s single-digit completion rates.

By the next year, with the help of State Farm, Georgia State began rolling out some of the same strategies in use on the Atlanta Campus to Perimeter students as part of the LIFT Program, and enrolled its first class of State Farm Scholars on the Decatur Campus.

“State Farm approached us about wanting to do a large project that would target low-income students,” says Tim Renick, the executive director of Georgia State’s new National Institute for Student Success, who, as the former senior vice president for student success, oversaw the creation of LIFT. “They focused on the Decatur Campus of Perimeter because it serves mostly low-income and mostly African American students.”

DeWayne Griffin, vice president and chief data officer at State Farm, says the company looks to invest in education programs that not only enable access, but lead to higher graduation rates and gainful employment. The company also donates toward transition scholarships, emergency assistance funds, military support and retention grants at Georgia State, Griffin says.

“One of the goals for the LIFT Program and State Farm Scholarships was to increase the number of underserved high school students and non-college-credentialed adults who enroll in postsecondary education in DeKalb County,” Griffin says. “We want to ensure students graduate with the knowledge and skills to succeed in the workforce and life.

That isn’t always in the form of a four-year degree. For some, it is a credential or a two-year degree.”

“ When I got the scholarship, I kind of felt like, at least for two years, some of my problems had been solved. It removed a weight from my shoulders and gave me the time to figure out what it was that I actually wanted to do.”

— KEYANNA JOHNSON

SURROUNDED IN SUPPORT Along with the same proactive advisement strategies at work on the Atlanta Campus, LIFT students also benefit from Perimeter Academy, a three-semester learning community that provides coaching and guidance to incoming students similar to the Atlanta Campus’ Summer Success Academy.

LIFT-State Farm Scholars also have weekly meetings and check-ins with LIFT Program staff, access to employment opportunities and a team of people to reach out to for help with problems outside the classroom that might impede their progress in it.

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“ I think LIFT and the State Farm Scholarship are a model for what can be done with public-private partnerships to keep students on a path to success.”

— DESCATUR M. POTIER

Descatur M. Potier is the director of the Georgia State LIFT Program, which combines data-driven academic advisement with scholarships, employment opportunities, leadership training and more to help students from every background stay on track for graduation.

“I tell students, ‘I can’t go to class for you, but if there are obstacles, I can help get them out of the way,’” says Descatur M. Potier, the LIFT Program director. “My goal is to remove obstacles so students can focus on being the best versions of themselves they can be. I surround my students with multiple people who are checking in with them.”

All of that support has led to astoundingly high graduation rates among State Farm Scholars. Of the 40 students in the initial cohort, 92 percent earned a degree by 2020, according to Renick, and the majority have moved on to bachelor’s degree programs.

By contrast, the three-year completion rate for public community colleges nationally is only 27 percent, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. The rate is far lower for Black students.

“There’s a combination of really great things that happen

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through the LIFT Program and the State Farm Scholarship,” says Jennifer Colatosti, assistant professor of English and assistant department chair at Perimeter’s Decatur Campus, who has taught several Perimeter Academy groups. “The students who are put in blocks of classes together usually develop a really great rapport with each other, and that seems to turn into a sort of intrinsic motivation for them to keep on top of their work.”

She points to one class that started a social media chat group, using it to share information and hold each other accountable.

“They, as a class, seemed to develop the social expectation that they were going to show up, they were going to pay attention and they were going to take the work seriously. It led to this group-success mentality,” Colatosti says. “They knew they had professors, staff and administrators they

could go to, but they also knew they could go to each other.”

For students like Johnson, who reach their senior year of high school and are either unsure of their next steps after graduation or have not yet secured the funding needed to go to college, the State Farm Scholarship and Perimeter’s Decatur Campus offer a cheaper, close-to-home experience.

Potier also points out that Perimeter’s Decatur Campus provides a contrast to Georgia State’s sprawling downtown campus, which may not be attractive to all students.

“It’s really changed the way students are looking at the two-year option,” says Potier, who cites State Farm Scholars who, in addition to Georgia State, have gone on to Spelman College and Louisiana State University. “I tell students, ‘You never lose in pursuing higher education. All it does is keep more options open.’

“I think LIFT and the State Farm Scholarship are a model for what can be done with public-private partnerships to keep students on a path to success.”

MAKING A DIFFERENCE Like Johnson, now 21 and in possession of an associate degree, Allissia Florence (B.S. ’21) of Decatur is also enrolled in a bachelor’s program on the Atlanta Campus.

A first-generation college student, Florence says she considered enrolling downtown after graduating from DeKalb’s Columbia High School, but was swayed by the smaller campus and lower cost at Perimeter, as well as the support services available to her through LIFT. “On a smaller campus, I was able to ask people for help and navigate better,” says Florence. “I don’t know if I would have done as well if I had to do it by myself.”

Sedrick Alphonzo, who has been a guidance counselor at Columbia High since 2016, has worked with several LIFT Program State Farm Scholars. He’s watched students graduate high school with middling grades — not the most accomplished but certainly capable — only to excel in college with the support of LIFT. They’ve come back to Columbia to talk to students.

They’ve worked at the DeKalb school district’s college and career fairs held in partnership with Perimeter’s Decatur Campus. They’ve developed self-confidence, improved communication skills and leadership ability, he says.

They’ve earned degrees. And many have gone on to fouryear programs that may have seemed out of reach as high school seniors.

“You can take a student who has a 2.7 or 3.0 grade point average, who has the capability, and you can get them to improve not only their academic ability, but improve in other areas that require independence and a certain level of self-confidence and self-esteem,” Alphonzo says.

“I wish this model would be how more universities would welcome and onboard first-year students. It would make a tremendous difference.”

Jennifer Colatosti (above), an assistant professor of English and assistant department chair at Perimeter College’s Decatur Campus, has seen LIFT-State Farm Scholars work together to help each other succeed. Allissia Florence (below) is a first-generation college student and State Farm Scholar who is working toward a bachelor’s degree at Georgia State’s Atlanta Campus.

FOR THE RECORD

BY HENRY LAKE PHOTOS BY STEVEN THACKS TON

AFTER MEETING AT GEORGIA STATE, LANCE (MBA ’03) AND APRIL (B.A. ’01) LEDBETTER EMBARKED ON A LIFELONG JOURNEY TOGETHER — AS HUSBAND AND WIFE AND AS CO-FOUNDERS OF DUST-TO-DIGITAL, A GRAMMY AWARD-WINNING RECORD LABEL MINING MUSIC’S PAST TO PRESERVE IT FOR FUTURE AUDIENCES.

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Lance and April Ledbetter have an ear for saving what others might ignore.

In October 2020, the Ledbetters, founders of the Grammy Award-winning archival record company Dust-to-Digital, took one of their daily walks along the leafy streets of Atlanta’s Ormewood Park neighborhood. It was the week of the release of their most recent CD boxed set, “The Harry Smith B-Sides,” and the couple were enjoying a break from the rush of fulfilling orders from the basement of their home.

On their walk, the Ledbetters heard a mew of distress and looked up to find a small, orange cat perched high in a tree. The animal appeared to have been attacked and bore serious injuries to one leg.

April and Lance have more experience rescuing gospel and global folk music from the ashes of history, but whether the little creature deserved saving was never up for debate. Even in the midst of the biggest week of their business year, the couple took the stray to a veterinarian’s office for surgery and began the long process of rehabilitating this new member of their music-driven family.

QUALITY JUDGMENT This same ethic of preservation carries the Ledbetters through every facet of their lives and business. Dust-to-Digital’s compilations and boxed sets span time and space, from the American South in the 1920s to the lands of Siberia’s indigenous people. No artist is too niche, no country’s music too distant to deserve inclusion. It’s all about quality — sharing music the Ledbetters believe their listeners will love.

William Reynolds Ferris, a celebrated folklorist and former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, speaks with reverence about the Ledbetters’ seemingly magical ability to pick out the music that will capture people’s hearts.

“They have an ear for good sound. They know what is beautiful. They don’t release a selection unless it’s beautiful and beautifully produced,” Ferris says.

“You’re not as concerned with, ‘Is this the kind of music I’m going to like?’ If it’s from Dust-to-Digital, you will like it. It will expand your realm of taste, and it will do it with recordings that are exciting.”

Lance cultivated this skill through practice. During his time at Georgia State, he constantly discovered new music as a DJ for WRAS, the college radio station.

He hosted a show focused on music from the 1920s and ’30s. His time slot was on Sunday mornings, which meant listeners would often call in on the way home from church to request Southern gospel tracks.

Because it was the time before YouTube, before Spotify, Lance would visit local record shops trying to find music for the show. When that didn’t work, he reached out to record collectors who would copy tracks onto cassette tapes and mail them to the station in the Student Center.

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“I would listen to these tapes during the week, and I’d play them on my radio show,” he says. “I couldn’t believe how incredible the music was — and how nobody could hear it.”

Even two decades later, there’s a distinct emotion in his voice at the thought that this music could have been lost.

MAKING OLD MEDIA NEW

April was among Lance’s early listeners. The couple met at Georgia State when April’s roommate and friend took a 101-level filmmaking class Lance was also in. The class relied on decades-old 16mm cameras shared between two students, so Lance would visit April’s place to work on class projects with her friend.

As he struggled to operate the dusty old cameras, he and April got to talking. Those conversations ignited the romantic spark that would grow into the partnership that drives Dust-to-Digital’s daily operations.

For April, being with Lance meant being all-in with his love for music. In 1999, when Lance came to her with the news that he wanted to start a business that would make this hard-to-find music commercially available, neither of them knew where the journey would take them.

“I thought at the time that he was trying to break up with me,” April confesses, laughing at the memory of Lance’s solemn business proposal. “He said he was going to be busy with this project and didn’t know how much free time he would have. I told him I’d help him with whatever he needed help doing.”

Contrary to April’s fears, founding Dustto-Digital bound them together around a mission — saving and sharing history’s great music — that has carried them higher and

A collection of images of musicians from around the world pulled from Dust-to-Digital’s more than 60 publications and its large social media outreach.

further than they ever expected in those early days. Among the label’s accolades are three Grammy Awards and a dozen nominations, as well as awards from the Association for Recorded Sound Collections, the Society for Ethnomusicology and Living Blues magazine.

Where Lance had a vision, April showed an expansive ability to manage the day-to-day needs of the business, taking it forward one step at a time.

“Lance is a very driven person,” April explains. “I find the most pleasure in putting pieces together to make something happen.

We pair well together.”

To Michael Graves (B.B.A. ’98), a fellow Georgia State alumnus and the audio engineer behind much of Dust-to-Digital’s acclaimed catalogue, the pair’s success is no surprise.

“As an audio engineer, this is the dream.

You want to work with people who have a very high bar,” Graves says. “With Lance and April, I’m so lucky that I get to work with some of the best of the best.”

The Ledbetters’ work always comes back to its heartfelt core: saving music that would otherwise be lost and making it available in new formats to people who can enjoy it.

The mission led them to start the nonprofit Music Memory, which digitizes rare recordings without commercial ambitions, just to preserve them.

“What the Ledbetters are doing is global,” Ferris says. “They are like bees to honey. They will go to Indonesia or Morocco, as well as to the Mississippi Delta, and they find these repositories of music and liberate them in ways that are highly accessible and beautifully designed.

“If there’s good music out there and it’s not being used, they will find it and share it in ways that are very powerful.”

Ferris worked with the Ledbetters to create 2018’s multimedia boxed set “Voices of Mississippi.” This collection of field recordings, made over the course of Ferris’ career as a scholar of Southern culture and restored to high quality by the Dust-to-Digital team, won two Grammy Awards: one for Best Historical Album and one for Best Liner Notes.

Ferris believes Lance and April are the modern-day stewards of a vital

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“I THINK RIGHT NOW, PEOPLE ARE EVEN MORE IN NEED OF MUSIC AND ART — THINGS THAT CAN TAKE YOU TO A DIFFERENT PLACE.” — April Ledbetter

tradition of music preservation.

“The Ledbetters build these platforms to deliver their work in ways that the artists of the past might have imagined but certainly could never have done,” Ferris says. “They’re the next generation of what music is all about. They respect and know those ancestral figures like the Lomaxes.”

That’s John and Alan Lomax, a father and son known for their field recordings of American folk music, work which helped to ignite the folk revivals of the 1950s and ’60s.

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CHANGING WITH THE TIMES

For Dust-to-Digital, paying tribute to the past also means looking ahead to the future, especially as new forms of media allow people to enjoy and share music in new ways. In this century of rapid change, it would be easy for

a company that first found acclaim for its CD boxed sets to despair at the rise of social media.

Instead, the Ledbetters see social media as a natural next step to share music even more.

“In 2016,” Lance says, “I had the idea to approach our social media like you’re sitting on the couch with me and we’re watching video clips together. I decided to put music on there that, even if it didn’t relate to the label, would teach people something new. The second or third clip we posted, it just exploded.”

Dip into Dust-to-Digital’s Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or YouTube accounts and you’ll find a wealth of video and audio content — enough to send you on a journey around the world. Dust-to-Digital has more than 220,000 followers on Twitter, 405,000 on Instagram and 1.2 million on Facebook — remarkable numbers for an indie record label originally created to save music from dusty academic archives, back rooms and rubbish bins.

Adaptability has also led the label to opportunities for new successes in the age of COVID-19.

Before releasing “The Harry Smith B-Sides,” April says they questioned whether people would be willing to spend any extra income they might have on a boxed set.

“I think right now, people are even more in need of music and art — things that can take you to a different place,” she says.

This time of change has also given the Ledbetters the courage to try a new tactic with their latest release, “Excavated Shellac: An Alternate History of the World’s Music.” This 100-mp3 set comes with a 186-page collection of essays — and no physical product at all. With this release, for the first time, Dust-to-Digital has gone fully digital.

“It was a bit of a risk, but it seems like most people are enjoying it,” Lance admits. “Our email inbox has been kind of crazy these days.

We’ve been getting orders from Istanbul, from Ireland, from all over. People can order it and listen to it right away. They don’t have to wait for shipping. It’s instantaneous.”

The work of Dust-to-Digital isn’t just about the music. It’s about people — the musical artists of yesteryear who have mostly passed on, leaving only their art behind.

What’s more, many artists in Dust-toDigital’s catalogue had their voices silenced during their lifetimes. The Cambodian rock ‘n’ roll artists featured on 2015’s “Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten” compilation perished in the Killing Fields when the Khmer Rouge came to power.

In the United States, the chronic toll of white supremacy cut short the lives of many of the African American musicians featured in Dustto-Digital’s releases.

Healed up after suffering a life-threatening injury, Mama Kitty is now enjoying life as a member of the Ledbetter family and her new digs in the Dust-to-Digital headquarters.

Do the Ledbetters feel a sense of personal responsibility to the artists they represent, in saving work that would otherwise be lost?

“That’s baked into the mission of our company,” Lance says. “So many of these artists did not get their due when they were alive. We want our work to be something that if these artists came back and saw what we’ve made and held it in their hands, they would be proud.”

“My home and my heart are Southern,” adds April. “It feels important to show appreciation for Black people, who’ve experienced systemic racism, and to share their music and their voices beyond their time.”

MUSIC FOR CATS

Lance and April engaged the same fix-it-up skill set used in their business to care for the stray cat they found on their walk back in October. The vet they consulted had doubts about the orange tabby’s chances, but the Ledbetters made a place for their new friend, dubbed Mama Kitty, in their basement stockroom.

They’re working up to introducing her to their other cat, Louie.

“She’s got a big personality for a little kitty. She’s kind of like our manager and supervisor,” April says. She and Lance share a laugh.

Readers with a discerning ear might wonder what music the Ledbetters listen to in their spare time. If you look at their Spotify account, you might not find what you’d expect.

Lance has a confession to make: “We actually found some playlists of ‘Music for Cats’ that we put on in the basement for Mama Kitty. My Spotify last year had cat music in the top three spots.”

April and Lance patch up great old musical tracks that need some extra TLC. Then, in turn, they share the music they love, enriching the lives of everyone they meet — even stray cats.

That’s Dust-to-Digital’s mission, and that’s the Ledbetter way.

M A G A Z I N E. G S U . E D U

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FROM THE CRUCIVERBALIST

MEETING IN THE MIDDLE

By Samuel A. Donaldson ACROSS 1. Greets with a hand motion (2 wds) 8. Lucy’s BFF, in classic TV 13. Tablet that debuted in 2013 (2 wds) 14. Reduce, ___, recycle 15. * They might not require an area code (2 wds) 16. Bridge positions that partner with Wests 17. NYC airport code (abbr) 18. * Antacid targets (2 wds) 20. Meddlers 22. Stick like glue 23. GPS estimate (abbr) 24. Is for two?

25. Tax ID, often (abbr) 26. * Carnivores (2 wds) 30. Knee part an athlete might tear (abbr) 33. “Cool” number (abbr) 34. Twisty shape 37. Shut down 39. “Hey, wait your turn in line!”

(2 wds) 42. * Tribute band song (2 wds) 44. Garment often not worn while working from home 45. “Saturday Night Live” alum Cheri 46. What three letters do in the answers to the starred clues!

48. Change, as gears 49. Accept as a tenant (2 wds) 50. “Westworld” star Thompson 51. Player on Team LeBron or Team Durant, in 2021 (hyph) DOWN 1. Wonka with a chocolate factory 2. Orbital high point 3. Unoccupied 4. Educator and author LeShan 5. Moe’s freebie 6. Pinball flubs 7. Words in an estimate

8. Kindle or Nook, for example (hyph) 9. Lead a class 10. Tells to be quiet 11. Fruity-smelling chemical compounds 12. Subside 19. Stable mother 21. Scottish hat 24. Hartsfield-Jackson Airport code (abbr)

27. Many a retired professor (abbr) 28. Helps out 29. Conference for Bama and UGA (abbr) 30. Approach abruptly 31. Provide attire for 32. “___ a Battlefield” (Pat Benatar oldie) (2 wds) 35. Rent from a renter 36. Geological layers

A professor at the College of Law who creates crosswords on the side, Samuel A. Donaldson has published more than 120 puzzles in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and more. Donaldson is now regularly contributing a crossword to each issue of Georgia State University Magazine. Check your answers at magazine.gsu.edu.

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G E O R G I A STATE U N I V E R S I T Y M A G A Z I N E S P R I N G ’2 1

38. Feudal laborers who sound like beach bums 39. Many a book club selection 40. “Inside the NBA” panelist Shaquille 41. Taste producer 43. Kansas city that becomes a stringed instrument if you add a V in front 47. Blog feed format (abbr)

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