Reflections on a life in print: My four-decade journey with the AJC

AJC journalist Thonnia Lee covered the exhibit. I still remember holding that photograph of Ellen Barton during the interview, not knowing that image would soon be seen throughout Atlanta.

Credit: (Courtesy of Herman Mason)

Credit: (Courtesy of Herman Mason)

I also did not know the power of the printed press.

In a time before cellphones, laptops or social media — when the morning paper was the city’s heartbeat — one good feature in the AJC could instantly catapult a person into local prominence. And it did. I experienced what I can only call “print-era fame.” Friends, alumni, church members and strangers saw the article. People mailed clippings to me. For a young genealogist and budding historian, that visibility was transformative.

Forty-one years later, in 2025, I reunited with Thonnia at Tuskegee University, where she now works. The moment felt full circle: the writer who helped introduce my work to the city now standing before me decades later. History, once again, was moving in its quiet, powerful rhythm.

Over the years, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution continued to chronicle my journey — and in doing so, it chronicled Atlanta’s evolving relationship with its own Black history. Somewhere along the way, I crossed paths with Harmon Perry, the Journal’s first Black reporter who also was a longtime photojournalist, and began what became a friendship that lasted until his death in 2003. His funeral was held at Greater Hopewell CME Church, where I was pastor, and I was honored to preach his eulogy.

Long before I knew him personally, Perry had photographed my mother and two other coeds during their student days at Morris Brown College, capturing them with dignity, elegance and care; Two of Perry’s images, depicting Malcolm X surrounded by students at Clark College and one of Muhammad Ali attending a Morris Brown football game, were iconic treasures.

While working at the Atlanta-Fulton Public Library as a Black studies archivist, I became keenly aware of the need to preserve Perry’s photographic collection. We acquired his pictures and negatives, which I personally packed and transported. They are now safely housed at the Auburn Avenue Research Library as part of its permanent collection.

It was an honor to include several of Perry’s photographs in a 1991 exhibition I curated “Hidden Treasures: African American Photographers in Atlanta.” Sharing the opening of that exhibition with Perry, standing alongside other legendary Atlanta photographers, was a particular joy.

Credit: Courtesy of Herman Mason

Credit: Courtesy of Herman Mason

The following year brought another milestone in my relationship with the AJC. Longstreet Press — owned by the Cox family, who also own The Atlanta Journal-Constitution — published my first book, “Going Against the Wind.” The project, a pictorial history of Black Atlanta, turned out to be a highly successful fundraiser for the APEX Museum. It also came with an extraordinary gift: unrestricted access to the AJC’s archives.

For a historian, that was like opening the vault of the city’s memory.

The book, which has long been out of print but occasionally pops up for sale online, features gems from some of the AJC’s great photojournalists, as well as images by local leaders, such as legendary entrepreneur Heman Perry (no relation to Harmon Perry), founder of Citizens Trust Bank and publisher of the Atlanta Independent newspaper. From those archives and countless clippings, I built what became a massive vertical file system — eight file cabinets filled to capacity — that documents Atlanta and African American history.

Journalists such as the AJC’s Ernie Suggs and others have continued this tradition, ensuring the story of Black Atlanta remains part of the public record.

In 1996, as Atlanta prepared for the Olympic Games, the AJC featured my work documenting African American history through historical markers and banners. That story helped to bring broader recognition to the Black Atlanta narratives that so often went untold in mainstream spaces.

Two years later, Bo Emerson wrote “In Your Face History,” an article that captured my identity as a “non-traditional historian.” He visited my Morehouse College history class and later my home, which at the time overflowed with archives, photographs and Atlanta ephemera. Emerson’s article elevated me as someone who collected, preserved and taught outside the conventional boundaries of academia, and affirmed my calling as an archivist of Black Atlanta.

In 2012, during a very challenging period in my life, I turned to the internet. What began as curiosity became community. I created a Facebook page simply to share photographs from my collection — pictures of schools, churches, neighborhoods and the people who shaped Atlanta. Before clicking “save,” I named the group Skip Mason’s Vanishing Black Atlanta.

I had no idea that Facebook group would grow into a virtual gathering spot for more than 66,000 members — many of them Grady babies, lifelong residents, those who “grew here, not flew here,” though all are welcome. Each day brings rich discussions about Atlanta, Georgia and the South. The page itself serves as a digital archive, a communal scrapbook, a safe space for remembering Atlanta as we all knew it.

Print and television journalists often draw from the conversations there, reaching out for interviews and historical insights — especially during Black History Month. In its own way, the Vanishing Black Atlanta page continues the relationship I’ve always had with the AJC: documenting, preserving and telling the story of a city that is constantly changing.

The AJC also played a role during moments when silence might have been easier. When plans for the National Center for Civil and Human Rights were announced, I was not invited to the initial meeting — a disappointment, given my lifelong commitment to preserving Atlanta’s African American history. Rather than sit quietly, I wrote an opinion piece explaining why Atlanta desperately needed a museum dedicated to its Black narrative. The AJC published that piece, creating a public conversation and making room for voices like mine — voices rooted in community, ancestry and lived experience.

This is the power of a newspaper — not simply to report, but to amplify, challenge and sometimes even correct.

As the AJC transitions away from print, I feel the end of an era — not just for journalism, but also for those of us shaped by the rhythm of daily reading, by the thrill of seeing our stories in black ink on white paper.

The printed AJC helped to raise me. It shaped my scholarship, it introduced my work to Atlanta on a larger scale and preserved moments of my life, moments I might have forgotten had they not been documented in those pages.

Newspapers hold history. They hold community. They hold us.

As the presses slow to a halt, I write this piece as a tribute to the newspaper that helped this proud son of Atlanta to become who I am.

I am grateful to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution for its enduring role in my journey and for the relationship we will continue to enjoy well into its new digital future.

The Rev. Dr. Herman “Skip” Mason Jr. is an author, historian and proud native Atlantan. He serves as president of the Interdenominational Theological Center and senior pastor of the Historic West Mitchell Christian Methodist Episcopal Church.