Tag: history

What does the disco ball that hung over the dance floor of Backstreet have in common with Atlanta Falcons memorabilia? They are two examples of the types of artifacts that can be found on a behind-the-scenes tour offered by the Atlanta History Center, thanks to a new partnership between Made By Us—a national coalition of history and civics organizations— and Airbnb.

"While history can provide an anchor to one’s soul, myths can become a kind of prison." Retired AJC columnist Jim Galloway looks at how myths of Scottish history influenced the South's Lost Cause myth.

For decades, long after the Civil War, men, women, and children convicted in Georgia courts—sometimes wrongly—were forced into unpaid labor at a brickyard along the Chattahoochee River. How will we remember them?

The Wylie Hotel has named its restaurant, Mrs. P’s, for an iconic gay bar housed in the building decades ago. Down the street, the Atlanta Eagle has become the city’s first designated historic landmark dedicated to LGBTQ+ history.

Run, the follow-up to the award-winning March trilogy, continues the comic-book memoir of the late congressman John Lewis. Here, coauthor Andrew Aydin discusses why the graphic novels are so important and timely.

Andrew Feiler’s book, A Better Life for Their Children, remembers the improbable partnership that empowered a generation of Black students to become poets, civil rights leaders, and Congress members.

In A Night at the Sweet Gum Head, released this month by W.W. Norton, journalist Martin Padgett sutures this context into the accounts of two main subjects: Bill Smith, who helped lead the Georgia Gay Liberation Front, worked as a city commissioner, and published the South’s leading gay newspaper, the Barb; and John Greenwell, who rose to drag stardom performing as Rachel Wells at the Sweet Gum Head nightclub.

The city booms after the bust, the South more powerfully confronts its past, Stacey Abrams plans a progressive revolution, Josef Martinez is king, and Staplehouse emerges.

The city was full of bravado in the days before the Great Recession. Plus, water woes, John Lewis, a spelling bee, Hurricane Katrina, our first guide to Buford Highway, and more.

A dig through our archives unearthed a cinematic rendering of Georgia just before the turn of the millennium, including our first review of bacchanalia, politics and the CDC, Wayne Williams, Richard Jewell, LaFace Records, Marla Maples, and more.