“We remembered.”
These are two powerful words that show up in Tayari Jones’s reflections on Leaving Atlanta, her novel about Black children growing up during the Atlanta Child Murders of 1979–1981. Jones describes how the fear of those years remained with her long after childhood and resurfaced when a young boy she was tutoring failed to show for his appointment one day.
I also remember. I recently had a conversation with my graduate school friend, B, who also lived in Atlanta as a child during those times. Our conversation helped me understand that remembering the same tragedy does not mean experiencing it in the same way.
I was nine years old during the Atlanta Child Murders. My family lived in an affluent suburban community near the Chattahoochee River. When a body was discovered in the river near our neighborhood, all parents of our subdivision went into high alert and became concerned for their own children’s safety. My brother and I took in their anxiety for sure.
Looking back, the contrast between our parents’ fears and our actual surroundings was ironic. We lived in a gated community where families were affluent, had residential security systems, and access to opportunities that were not equally available throughout metropolitan Atlanta. I’m sure many parents of children living in the Atlanta area were fearful for the safety of all of us. But our individual living circumstances were quite different.
My interest in revisiting this history emerged because I had begun examining historical questions about informed consent in a CDC investigation surrounding the Atlanta Child Murders and was seeking relevant documents through the Freedom of Information Act. At the same time, I was having teaching conversations with residents about bioethicist Keisha Ray’s Black Health: The Social, Political, and Cultural Determinants of Black People’s Health. Conversations about her work, including its discussion of sleep, led me to reconsider the Atlanta Child Murders through a different ethical lens and opened conversations with my friend B.
B grew up near Techwood Homes in Atlanta. Like me, she had been a child around age 9. During those talks, our conversation turned to sleep. Not unlike the childhood story of author Tayari Jones, my friend also knew one of the missing and murdered children. She mentioned: “Everyone knew one another, we all attended church or school together, and our mothers talked to each other.” The violence was not only reported on television, but it was also experienced in real time by her community.
She described remaining hyper-vigilant for years afterward. Even as an adult, she continues to experience difficulty sleeping.
Then she told me something I have not forgotten.
When B attended graduate school, she had a scholarship and federal student loans, so her financial resources were limited. Nevertheless, she actively sought out the “white affluent neighborhood” and then spent more money on housing because she told me, “She wanted to feel safe at night.” B laughed when telling me, but her explanation was serious. She was willing to pay more for the possibility of peaceful sleep.
Her story brought me back to the part of Ray’s book asking Does where we sleep matter? In this chapter of Black Health, Ray argues that sleep cannot be understood without also considering the social, political, and environmental circumstances in which people live. If we live in dangerous areas, we will not sleep well. She examines housing inequality, environmental injustice, racial discrimination, and the effects of vigilance on sleep health. This challenges the assumption that poor sleep can be solved through individual choices.
There has been substantial research on how growing up in a dangerous environment can lead to hypervigilance and poor sleep in adulthood. The research I’ve found connects three issues: a child growing up in a neighborhood where there is upheaval, domestic violence, or even ongoing threats to their own safety. The child then learns to become alert to danger as a necessary personal protection response. Ultimately, this defense posture can produce effects like difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep, and such continues into adulthood.
The fear that surrounded the Atlanta Child Murders allows us to consider what happens when people must remain alert to threats that are largely beyond their control.
For children, the ethical problem is disconcerting. Children cannot choose their neighborhoods, determine how legal systems respond to danger, or independently obtain safer housing. Their parents and caregivers can act with extraordinary care and devotion, but even the strongest families cannot eliminate every threat arising in their neighborhood just beyond the home.
B’s later housing decision reveals something ironic to me about autonomy. She had the freedom to live in, what she felt, was a safer neighborhood, but exercising that freedom came at a cost. The money she had to buy that safer housing could have been directed toward her other needs during graduate school. With that said, there is a meaningful ethical difference between paying more for desirable amenities and paying more because one feels unable to sleep peacefully elsewhere.
I agree that discussions about sleep hygiene, including regular bedtimes, quiet bedrooms, and comfortable sleeping conditions, may be useful. But as Ray points out, they assume everyone has access to resources and safe environments that, in actuality, are not equally available.
The historical record reinforces the importance of taking these experiences seriously. Contemporary accounts of the Atlanta Child Murders described frightened children, disrupted routines, and nightmares. An eleven-year-old described dreaming that the killer was coming for him and waking up frightened. Decades later, some relatives of victims continued to describe disturbing dreams. These accounts do not establish that everyone who lived through the murders developed lasting sleep difficulties. They do, however, remind us that the consequences of violence may extend beyond its immediate victims and beyond the years in which it occurs.
For years, I thought of the Atlanta Child Murders as something my family had lived through. That remains true. Our parents’ fear was real, and it affected our household. But my conversation with my friend revealed how differently that fear could be experienced depending on one’s proximity to violence and access to protection.
Tayari Jones’s words, “We remembered,” capture the persistence of that history. But memory does not carry the same weight for everyone. I remembered my mother’s fear in a relatively secure suburban home. My friend remembered a child she knew who was killed, years of vigilance, and the continuing difficulty of sleeping peacefully. Later, she used scarce resources to seek the kind of neighborhood security that had surrounded my childhood.
Bioethics should address that difference. It would be an interesting change if we asked whether someone feels safe enough to rest where they live, rather than asking whether they are getting enough sleep or giving sleep hygiene advice. No one should have to spend beyond their means simply to find a place where they believe they can close their eyes without fear.
Kyoko L. Yoda, DMD, MSPH, MSD is an instructor at Children’s Hospital Colorado.