The first glass of Coca-Cola is served
Coca-Cola was billed as a versatile drug that could “cure all nervous afflictions—Sick Headache, Neuralgia, Hysteria, Melancholy, Etc. …”
Sam Massell: It’s time to say “never again”
Last Tuesday night, huddled behind the steering wheel in an overcoat, gloves and a hat, Buckhead Coalition president Sam Massell was gridlocked on Atlanta’s main artery, stuck in the slush with the rest of us. As his usual 16-minute Buckhead commute down Peachtree Road slid into an hour, Massell, 86, had time to reflect on half a century of metro Atlanta's mass transit maladies.
47. Listen to MLK
There are few places in Atlanta we call sacred, but the sanctuary of Historic Ebenezer Baptist Church is one of them.
Dedication of the Gold Dome
The dedication of Georgia’s new Capitol on July 4, 1889 was an exercise in mixed metaphors. The ceremony, a grand legislative procession from the lawmakers’ temporary digs in an opera house on Marietta Street to the gilded edifice six blocks away, was carefully staged to symbolize democracy as an institution.
The murder of Mary Phagan
On April 26, 1913, Mary Phagan, an employee of the National Pencil Factory, went into the business office to pick up $1.20 in pay from business manager Leo Frank. Mary, who was thirteen, earned twelve cents an hour running a machine that put metal caps on pencils. Frank, a Cornell graduate, had supervised National Pencil for five years.
Marching with Selma’s foot soldiers
I have been to Selma, Alabama, at least three dozen times. My father grew up there with his grandparents and a gaggle of cousins. For much of his childhood, his front yard was a...
Groundbreaking for the Atlanta Stadium
It’s the ultimate example of Atlanta’s ahem, ballsy boosterism. On April 15, 1964, ground was broken for a new stadium. Never mind that the city didn’t have a baseball franchise and details of how it would all be paid for were still being sorted out. “We expect to be playing major league baseball here this time next year,” mayor Ivan Allen confidently told the New York Times.
Dedication of new downtown mural honoring John Lewis, civil rights hero.
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.
You can’t replace this: The musical legacy of Dante’s Down the Hatch
At one o’clock today, Atlanta city councilman Michael Julian Bond will honor Dante’s Down the Hatch owner Dante Stephensen at city hall with a City of Atlanta proclamation in honor of the restaurateur and jazz promoter’s “contributions to Atlanta’s cultural and business life.” Bond, a regular at the now-shuttered Buckhead nightspot, followed in the footsteps of his civil rights icon father Julian Bond, who was a regular at the original Dante’s Underground Atlanta location in the 1970s. “Dante’s was an Atlanta tradition,” explains Bond. “Locals and tourists alike flocked this unique establishment to experience a taste of the city in a communal fashion. This proclamation is our small gesture to Mr. Stephensen for four decades of service to Atlanta.”
Just what is that tower in the Old Fourth Ward?
If you’ve found yourself in the Old Fourth Ward—maybe strolling up Irwin Street toward Bell Street Burritos or heading down the Atlanta BeltLine to Studioplex—you’ve undoubtedly spotted that giant concrete tower. And you’ve wondered, Just what is that? Or, more intriguingly, Does anyone live in there?
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