Let the tribute fit the man.

African Americans lost a great champion when my dear friend Maynard Holbrook Jackson Jr. succumbed to a heart attack in Washington, D.C., this past June. By demanding that African Americans be included in the expansion of Hartsfield International Airport 30 years ago, Jackson, as Atlanta's first black mayor, became the first leader of a major city to put "action" into affirmative action. As a result, Jackson did more to fuel African American business growth--including allowing many of the nation's largest black-owned companies to flourish--than any elected official in American history.

But make no mistake about it: Jackson's great achievements as mayor of Atlanta--the expansion of Hartsfield Airport, the development of Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transportation, and Atlanta's hosting of the 1996 Summer Olympic Games--benefited all of its citizens, not just African Americans. In fact, Jackson is the first mayor in Atlanta's history to be committed to ensuring that all Atlantans shared in the responsibilities and the rewards of cultivating its bounty. And thanks to his insistence that all Atlantans, regardless of race, be included in the business of the city, no mayor has done more to establish Atlanta as the international city we know today than Maynard Jackson.

Unfortunately, judging from the few non-African Americans among the 5,000 who attended Jackson's funeral at the Boisfeuillet Jones Atlanta Civic Center, that fact seems to be either unrecognized or unappreciated by too many of Atlanta's citizens. This could result in Jackson's contributions being marginalized or minimalized as decisions are made on how to best honor his legacy.

For example, Jackson's death has sparked a campaign to rename Hartsfield International Airport in his honor. That effort is being met with resistance from those who feel that the airport should retain the name of William Berry Harts field, the city's mayor from 1942 to 1962, who first dubbed Atlanta "the city too busy to hate." By leading the campaign to build an airport on the site of Candler Field (named for yet another of the city's mayors, Asa G. Candler), Hartsfield helped to make Atlanta, already the center of the South, one of America's greatest cities. Jackson built on that foundation, starting with the airport's expansion, to make Atlanta one of the great cities of the world. The administrations of Hartsfield and Jackson form the social and economic bridge of Atlanta's transition from a southern bastion of segregation to a national model of inclusion. Renaming the airport Hartsfield/Jackson International seems to me a fitting tribute to the two mayors whose legacies are inextricably tied to the airport and who are most responsible for making Atlanta the great city that it is.

Yet, the renaming of the airport should be only the beginning. Jackson's contributions--like the man himself--are far too broad and deep to be adequately represented by the naming of only one place in his honor, even if that place is an international airport. A proper tribute demands that courthouses and public schools, highways and municipal buildings, convention centers and music halls will someday bear Maynard Jackson's name. There should be at least one Maynard Holbrook Jackson school at a major university--and not necessarily limited to historically black ones.

Jackson did not serve black Atlanta or white Atlanta; he served all of Atlanta, even when he was not mayor. Maynard Jackson's legacy should be honored not just by African Americans, but all Atlantans, and indeed all Americans for generations to come.