Tag: John Lewis

U2’s intersections with Atlanta over the years have gone beyond the city as a requisite tour stop. For a band from Europe intent on deconstructing the myth of America, Atlanta—its imperfect icons, its musicians, its leaders—has been a specific, if rarely noticed, part of U2’s journey, not only for the city’s social justice movements of the past but for the present, too. In anticipation of U2’s first Atlanta concert in nine years, two generations of Georgians talk about the band.

Nearly 40 years since Watkins turned a former Confederate general’s Victorian house in the West End into a funeral home, he has built a multimillion dollar empire that lays to rest roughly 1,500 people each year. Watkins organized the funerals of Coretta Scott King, Lillian Miles Lewis (Congressman John Lewis’s wife of 50 years), and family members of Usher and Real Housewives of Atlanta star Phaedra Parks.

Three Atlanta icons earned a spot on this year's list, alongside President Donald Trump, Moonlight director Barry Jenkins, Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, and others.

We chatted with Kathleen Dowdey, the director of the project, which airs Friday, February 10.

In 2010 Rodney Mims Cook Sr., the aging patriarch of one of Atlanta’s most prominent families, was in poor health and seemingly fading. Fearing his father didn’t have much time left, Rodney Jr. moved him into his guest house. The elder Cook one day called his son to his side and delivered a final charge: You need to rebuild Mims Park.

A week from being sworn in as the 45th President of the United States and days before the federal holiday commemorating Martin Luther King Jr., Donald J. Trump took umbrage with criticism levied by Georgia congressman John Lewis, who questioned the legitimacy of Trump’s election, what with the steady drip of reports about Russian hacking and all.

John Lewis is in the midst of a victory lap right now. The longtime Democratic congressman, the last of the surviving “Big Six” leaders of the civil rights movement, has spent the past several years honoring the legacy of the Selma march, paying tribute to the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and occasionally joining in nonviolent protests.

President Barack Obama on local civil rights legend: "Julian Bond helped change this country for the better. And what better way to be remembered than that.”

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...

Selma director Ava DuVernay shot her new film about the civil rights movement’s 1965 bloody march to voting equality in just six weeks this summer in Atlanta and Alabama. Scheduled to open in limited release on Christmas Day, Selma stars David Oyelowo as MLK, Carmen Ejogo as Coretta Scott King, Andre Holland as Andrew Young, and Stephan James as a young John Lewis. We talked with DuVernay in the fall, when she took a break from the editing room to discuss the film.