The Mayor of ‘The Ellis Island of the South’ Has a Message for Donald Trump

CLARKSTON, Georgia—Twenty miles east of Atlanta sits a low-slung little town of 17,000 that could almost pass for any other in the American South. Train tracks split the town in half. Hulking gas stations serve commuters driving toward the interstate. Shops off the main drag are a little past their prime, but they’re nearly all full.

But inside those stores you’ll see why Clarkson is unlike any other town in Red State America. An Asian grocery store stands next to a Shawarma grill, around the corner from Tran Auto Repair and Refuge Coffee Company. At Clarkston Village, the main strip mall in town, women in flowing Muslim head scarves mix with Latino families and Asian teenagers. If you’re there at dinner time, you can eat Himalayan, Halal, Thai, Burmese, or African.

The ethnic restaurants and stores may be unfamiliar to people passing through, but they are often the only thing that’s familiar to many in Clarkston’s diverse population, more than half of whom are foreign born. Many of those are refugees who fled their own disintegrating cultures to apply for asylum in the United States. Once screened and accepted overseas, the U.S. passed them on to non-profit resettlement agencies. Many of those agencies identified Clarkston years ago as a nearly ideal landing spot for people transitioning to a new life in America.

The town struggled at several points to accommodate the newcomers, but is now a multi-cultural hub. The local elementary school’s website is translated into 104 languages. A Yelp page lists the “10 Best Mosques near Clarkston.” Time magazine hailed it as “the most diverse square mile in America.”

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