Tag: 50 Who Made Atlanta
Archbishop Paul J. Hallinan
The city’s progressive first archbishop became an international champion of Catholic reform and ecumenism.
Civil rights icon Xernona Clayton’s unlikely friendship with a KKK Grand Dragon
Perhaps the most remarkable chapter in Xernona Clayton’s life was her influence on Calvin Craig, a Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan.
Hank Aaron
Thirty-five years after retiring from baseball, the man many still consider the once and forever home run king keeps his hands in the sport he transformed.
Robert W. Woodruff
If you took a map of Atlanta and placed dots on every spot where Woodruff—during his time the most admired, most influential, and richest man in Atlanta—left a mark, the terrain would be covered.
Ralph McGill
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.
Ted Turner
In the forty years he has been in the public eye, Ted Turner has been called a genius, a jackass (by his father, among others), a visionary, childlike (a compliment), childish (not a compliment), a pioneer, a young maverick, an old lion, a straight shooter, egomaniacal, steadfast, restless, haunted, mercurial, brilliant, impatient, impetuous, insecure, generous, genuine, loyal, and cheap. Also nuts.
Herbert Jenkins
Soon after Mayor William Hartsfield named him police chief, Jenkins busted up the KKK-infiltrated police union and hired the city’s first eight black officers.