History - Atlanta Magazine
 
Articles on Atlanta History

Author Rebecca Burns

  • Rebecca Burns

    Deputy Editor

    Burns has contributed to Atlanta magazine since 1995 and worked on staff in various capacities, including serving as editor-in-chief from 2002 to 2009. She returned to the magazine in August 2012 after several years as director of digital strategy for Emmis Publishing, the magazine's parent company. Her career merges interests in media's future and our region's past. She's the author of three books on Atlanta history and at work on her fourth—an account of the Great Atlanta Fire of 1917. She co-curated the Atlanta History Center exhibit "Atlanta Magazine, 1961-2011: 50 Years of the Changing City" and produced the accompanying award-winning digital media project. An adjunct professor of journalism at Emory University, Burns is a frequent speaker at civic and community events. She lives in Cabbagetown with her husband, the designer and illustrator James Burns.

Launching Forward Atlanta (again)

Civic leaders dig up a decades-old slogan

by Rebecca Burns
Why mess, as they say, with success? That’s the apparent philosophy of civic boosters, who will reincarnate the Forward Atlanta marketing campaign the Chamber of Commerce first debuted in the 1920s. Read More

Bittersweet Auburn

The landmark district is named endangered—again

by Rebecca Burns
For the second time in twenty years, the National Trust for Historic Preservation has put the Sweet Auburn district—once Atlanta’s center of African American business and culture—on its “endangered” list. Read More

Birth of Martha Lumpkin, Atlanta's namesake

August 25, 1827

by Rebecca Burns
Atlanta wasn’t really planned. It just kind of ... happened. Our streets follow the lines of former cow paths (which explains why I always get turned around on Moore's Mill). And our name evolved in a similarly scattershot manner. Read More

The Battle of Atlanta

July 22, 1864

by Rebecca Burns
“The Battle of Atlanta” sounds pretty definitive. And it’s understandable that the average person, not steeped in Civil War martial minutia, might consider this to be the dramatic and fiery destruction of the city (i.e. that famous flaming scene in Gone with the Wind.) But in fact, the battle waged in Atlanta on July 22, 1864 was just one step of the Atlanta Campaign, a months-long effort that didn’t reach its blazing conclusion until the fall. Read More

John Lewis's campaign mugshot

The congressman draws on an image from a 1960s arrest

by Rebecca Burns
John Lewis’s 2012 reelection staff decided to embrace the congressman’s civil disobedience record with merchandise featuring a photo from the activist’s 1963 arrest at an Atlanta Toddle House sit-in. Read More

The murder of Alberta King

June 30, 1974

by Rebecca Burns
On Sunday June 30 1974, Alberta Christine Williams King played “The Lord’s Prayer” on the organ of Ebenezer Baptist, the church where her father, A.D. Williams, her husband, Martin Luther King Sr., and son, Martin Luther King Jr., all had served as pastors. Read More

The Great Fire of 1917

by Rebecca Burns
A half-century after Sherman burned Atlanta, the core of the city went up in flames again. The Great Atlanta Fire of 1917 destroyed 1,938 buildings, wiped out 300 acres of real estate, and left more than 10,000 people homeless—almost a tenth of the city’s residents. Read More

Braves lose World Series—and get a parade!

October 29, 1991

by Rebecca Burns
On October 29, 1991, 750,000 Atlantans stormed Downtown to cheer for a losing team: the Atlanta Braves, returning from a defeat by the Minnesota Twins in a nail-biting World Series. Read More

The integration of Atlanta Public Schools

August 30, 1961

by Rebecca Burns
On the morning of August 30, 1961, nine African American students headed for the first day of classes at four all-white Atlanta high schools. They were shadowed by hundreds of reporters, dozens of police officers, and crowds of parents, politicians, and onlookers. Read More

Six Flags Over Georgia opens

June 16, 1967

by Rebecca Burns
It took $12 million to transform a 276-acre dairy farm west of Downtown into the Southeast’s first theme park; that Magic Kingdom down in Orlando wouldn’t open for four years. But all the clearing and construction didn’t eradicate the red clay and scrubby pines of the Cobb County surroundings when Six Flags Over Georgia opened for business on June 16, 1967. That rustic flavor added to the verisimilitude of Six Flags Over Georgia’s prime attractions: the Dahlonega Mine Train roller coaster, which hurtled from a thirty-seven-foot peak, and the Tales of the Okefenokee boat ride, which took passengers past slightly creepy scenes based on Joel Chandler Harris fables. Read More