History

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.

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.

On that warm March afternoon, what pastor Fred Musser first thought was the sound of freight palettes dropping from a truck turned out to be the crack of a .44 caliber Marlin rifle—a weapon designed to kill large game.

When it comes to building stuff, Atlanta’s got a great history of public-private partnership. Civic leaders come up with an idea, City Hall irons out the political wrinkles, and then Coke, Delta, the Home Depot, and other hometown companies contribute funding. It’s how Atlanta won the Braves and the Olympics. On the other hand, our track record of taking care of people in the process of building things—large venues in particular—is lousy.

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.

The Island's biggest draws, by far, are the plentiful opportunities it affords guests to reconnect with nature—opportunities that Amelia Island is invested in sustaining well into the future. 

Emblazoned with features both grotesque and enigmatic, face jugs are a style of folk pottery primarily concentrated in Georgia and the Carolinas. Though these...

John Lewis came to Atlanta five decades ago as a founding leader of SNCC—the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee—and with an already impressive resume as an activist.

To veteran Atlanta litigator Emmet Bondurant, however, the question isn’t whether the rightward-tilting Court is likely to lift the requirement that Georgia, Mississippi, and other states with histories of black voter suppression obtain Justice Department “pre-clearance” for any measures that affect voters. (Hint: Is the pope-emeritus Catholic?) To Bondurant, the real mystery is why the Court has any business reviewing the law at all.

Coca-Cola was billed as a versatile drug that could “cure all nervous afflictions—Sick Headache, Neuralgia, Hysteria, Melancholy, Etc. …”