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54 maconmagazine.com | October/November 2024 neighborhood's bedrock. A group of young professionals has organized the Pleasant Hill Neighborhood Association and are working toward a refreshed strategic plan for the historic community's future. And where can you nd these young leaders and their forebears? With their families, in Mattie Hubbard Jones Park, each June. Erion Smith, a leader of the neighborhood organization and a member of the Cure Violence team, told us: "My wish is to really just bring everybody back together. We want to be on one board, be able to make decisions for our community as one, not one person or being all the same. One of the things I always love about the reunion is, I see people I haven't seen in years and just know that they still have that pride and love." A d ay o f j oy a n d c o n n e c t i o n The energy at the reunion is electric. There are live performances that have launched careers, such as, Vinson Muhammad whose artistic handle is ALÄZ. Pickup basketball games that rival the nationally renowned New York City playground Rucker Park. Art contests that inspired creatives like my son to use his win at eleven years old, honing his craft and eventually winning his rst major art contest as an adult two years ago. And the food. Yeah, that. You have not lived until you've tent-hopped at the Pleasant Hill Reunion. Hassan believed in Pleasant Hill's legacy, telling The Telegraph in June 2012 that Pleasant Hill was a "mecca of African-American civilization up from slavery." Alongside other members of the We Care Group he helped found (such as Alice Jackson and Peter and Naomi Givens), he also organized early cleanups of Linwood Cemetery and a community garden. The group founded the reunion as a way to preserve the village mindset, even as younger folks began to leave the neighborhood for less blighted areas. Since 1996, the Reunion has created a means by which people with Pleasant Hill ties could come together each year in a free, fun, family-friendly activity that expresses pride in its past with a good time in the present. T h e n ex t g e n e ra t i o n In more recent years, the We Care Group and Hassan's mantle has been taken up by longtime custodian of L.H. Williams Elementary, Amanda White, with support from Booksie ???, who now organize the reunion.A grassroots organization headquartered in Pleasant Hill, Cure Violence Macon, uses a nationally proven model of "violence interruption" to reduce violent crime. These community change agents are mostly from Hassan's son's generation, showing that The Hill's long-held values of watching out for each other remain in the "I see people I haven't seen in years and just know that they still have that pride and love." CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT The reunion takes place in Mattie Hubbard Jones Park, a new street mural by Kevin Scene Lewis in Pleasant Hill, grilling out during the reunion, a previous reunion with Pleasant Hill elders.