Civil Rights

At long last, Collier Heights—a West Atlanta neighborhood built by and for African Americans—has been designated as a Local Historic District by the City of Atlanta, the mayor's office announced today.

One of the youngest heroes of the civil rights movement, John Lewis moved to Atlanta in 1963 to head the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

The greatest orator of the twentieth century inspired seismic changes at home that reverberated around the world.

Martin Luther King Jr.'s children are no strangers to the Fulton County courthouse. Their legal dramas have been the subject of news stories for years. In the latest wrangling, brothers Dexter and Martin, filed a complaint on Friday, asking their younger sister, Bernice, to turn over MLK's Nobel Peace Prize and his Bible.

In the segregated South where the brothers Young grew up, the YMCA was much more than a place to work out. With restaurants, hotels, auditoriums, and convention centers off-limits to blacks, the Y—which was not integrated until 1963—served as a gathering place for meetings, concerts, and educational programs.

Maynard Holbrook Jackson Jr. made history as Atlanta’s first black mayor, and his January 7, 1974, inaugural itself shattered precedent. The traditional City Hall ceremony for a few hundred was traded for a riotous ninety-minute gala at the Civic Center.

As attendees made their way to last night’s opening reception for “And the Struggle Continues,” an exhibit showcasing the Southern Christian Leadership Conference papers housed at Emory University, they passed more than four dozen student and faculty protestors. Lining the circular foyer on the third-floor landing of the Woodruff Library, the demonstrators silently presented a thicket of placards—“We are Emory,” “We are sorry,” “I deserve 5/5 respect,” “Ethics is not a brand,” "This is 5/5 outrageous." The SCLC artifacts provided an easy analogy: photos of Rev. Joseph Lowery with a bullhorn, Andrew Young walking a picket line, signs from 1968’s Resurrection City.

In 1963 Herman J. Russell built his house on the lot that nobody else wanted. His plastering firm had just landed a mammoth contract to help construct the new Atlanta–Fulton County Stadium, so tackling a hilly residential lot seemed relatively simple.

McGill won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing after he denounced the 1958 bombing of the Temple on Peachtree Street. The lionhearted journalist, who had covered the rise of Hitler, linked the bombing to the racial hatred of the South’s white leaders.