Turning Point: The American Civil War

Turning Point: The American Civil War, located in the 9,200-square-foot DuBose Gallery, is one of the nation’s largest and most complete Civil War exhibitions. With over 1,500 Union and Confederate artifacts, including cannons, uniforms, and flags, visitors experience the Civil War through the eyes of soldiers and civilians.

Slavery at Jefferson's Monticello: How the Word is Passed Down

The Atlanta History Center presents Slavery at Jefferson’s Monticello: How the Word is Passed Down, a traveling exhibition organized by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello in partnership with the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Researching African American Genealogy; featuring Frazine Taylor of the Alabama Department of Archives and History (retired)

Location: Auburn Avenue Research Library

Franzine Taylor will discuss the unique challenges associated with conducting African American genealogy research. This community workshop will focus on the skills and resources required to effectively trace your African American family history.

Summer Camp: Dig In!

Atlanta History Center summer campers explore the past and the world around them through enriching and engaging activities. Join the fun with games, stories, crafts, and outdoor expeditions as well as interactive exhibitions.

Summer Camp: Survivor: 1860

Atlanta History Center summer campers explore the past and the world around them through enriching and engaging activities. Join the fun with games, stories, crafts, and outdoor expeditions as well as interactive exhibitions.

Livingston Lecture Series: Allen C. Guelzo, Gettysburg: The Last Invasion

From Civil War historian Allen C. Guelzo comes the reality of the Battle of Gettysburg, portraying the ordinary soldier and depicting the personalities and circumstances that produced one of the great battles of all time. Never before has a book examined the intense fighting of the individual soldier, studied the politics of military decisions, or placed the battle in the context of nineteenth-century military practice. What emerges is a previously untold story, and through such scrutiny the cornerstone battle of the Civil War is given vivid new life.

Juneteenth: The First Day of Freedom

This two-day celebration focuses on the appreciation, reconciliation, and commemoration of the end of slavery in the United States. Guests explore the themes of freedom and family history with genealogy workshops, gallery character performances, kid-friendly activities, and self-guided explorations of the traveling exhibition, Slavery at Jefferson’s Monticello: How the Word is Passed Down. Genealogy workshops offered on Saturday include Beginning Genealogy, presented by Tamika Strong of the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society (AAHGS); Using Census Records in Family History, presented by Emma Davis-Hamilton, Atlanta Chapter president of AAHGS; and Using Cemetery Records, presented by Dr. D.L. Henderson of South-View Cemetery.  Sunday programs include Beginning Genealogy and Using Military Records in Family History Research, presented by Atlanta History Center Senior Archivist, Sue VerHoef.  This program is part of the Bank of America Free Admission Weekends. On the third weekend (Saturday and Sunday) of each month, February – June 2013, ALL guests receive FREE admission to the Atlanta History Center to see Slavery at Jefferson’s Monticello: How the Word is Passed Down.

Bank of America Free Admission Weekend

On the third weekend (Saturday and Sunday) of each month, February – June 2013, ALL guests receive FREE admission to the Atlanta History Center, including Slavery at Jefferson’s Monticello: How the Word is Passed Down.

Summer Camp: My Town

Atlanta History Center summer campers explore the past and the world around them through enriching and engaging activities. Join the fun with games, stories, crafts, and outdoor expeditions as well as interactive exhibitions.

Summer Camp: Hail to the Chief

Atlanta History Center summer campers explore the past and the world around them through enriching and engaging activities. Join the fun with games, stories, crafts, and outdoor expeditions as well as interactive exhibitions.

My Father's Name: A Black Virginia Family After the Civil War; Featuring Dr. Lawrence Jackson of Emory University; book signing and discussion

Location: Auburn Avenue Research Library

In his moving historical memoir, My Father’s Name: A Black Virginia Family After the Civil War, Dr. Lawrence Jackson recounts his family history in Virginia, recalling both the horror of slavery and the later struggles of postbellum freedom.

Wrap up your Fourth of July week at the Atlanta History Center. Experience what the Fourth of July has meant through American history. Enjoy activities, demonstrations, music, and performances.
 

Summer Camp: Beyond Gettysburg

Atlanta History Center summer campers explore the past and the world around them through enriching and engaging activities. Join the fun with games, stories, crafts, and outdoor expeditions as well as interactive exhibitions.

Summer Camp: Weird History

Atlanta History Center summer campers explore the past and the world around them through enriching and engaging activities. Join the fun with games, stories, crafts, and outdoor expeditions as well as interactive exhibitions.

Livingston Lecture: Joseph J. Ellis, Revolutionary Summer: The Birth of American Independence

Joseph Ellis is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Founding Brothers. His portrait of Thomas Jefferson, American Sphinx, won the National Book Award. He recently retired from his position as the Ford Foundation Professor of History at Mount Holyoke College and lives in Amherst, Massachusetts, with his wife and youngest son.

Summer Camp: The Cold War (Code Name: Spy Camp)

Atlanta History Center summer campers explore the past and the world around them through enriching and engaging activities. Join the fun with games, stories, crafts, and outdoor expeditions as well as interactive exhibitions.

Elson Lecture: H.W. Brands, The Man Who Saved the Union

H.W. Brands is the Dickson Allen Anderson Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin. A New York Times-bestselling author, he was the finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in biography for The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin and again for Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Summer Camp: Creatures Great and Small

Atlanta History Center summer campers explore the past and the world around them through enriching and engaging activities. Join the fun with games, stories, crafts, and outdoor expeditions as well as interactive exhibitions.

Summer Camp: Adventures in History

Atlanta History Center summer campers explore the past and the world around them through enriching and engaging activities. Join the fun with games, stories, crafts, and outdoor expeditions as well as interactive exhibitions.

AHC Lecture: Earl Hess, Kennesaw Mountain: Sherman, Johnston, and the Atlanta Campaign

Earl J. Hess is Stewart W. McClelland Chair in History at Lincoln Memorial University and is the author of a number of books, including The Civil War in the West: Victory and Defeat from the Appalachians to the Mississippi.

Aiken Lecture: James McBride, The Good Lord Bird

From the bestselling author of The Color of Water and Song Yet Sung comes the story of a young boy born a slave who joins John Brown’s antislavery crusade, and who must pass as a girl to survive.

Livingston Lecture: A. Scott Berg, Wilson

A. Scott Berg is the author of four best-selling biographies: Max Perkins: Editor of Genius, winner of the National Book Award; Goldwyn: Lindbergh, winner of the Pulitzer Prize; and Kate Remembered.

Cherokee Garden Lecture Series: An Evening with Mario Nievera, Forever Green: A Landscape Architect's Innovative Gardens Offer Environments to Love and Delight

Join renowned landscape architect Mario Nievera who will lead us on an illustrated tour of his landscapes throughout the United States as featured in his first book, Forever Green: A Landscape Architect’s Innovative Gardens Offer Environments to Love and Delight. Nievera will showcase his extensive range of designs for civic spaces, parks, and residential estates, such as a garden terrace overlooking New York's Central Park to a public garden attached to The Flagler Museum in Palm Beach. His design work provides an extraordinary opportunity for ideas on how to create your own fabulous landscapes. Mario Nievera has a keen eye and talent to combine hardscape materials and lush plantings creating unique landscape compositions, which are admired and published in design magazines and newspapers throughout the world.

John Ferling, Jefferson and Hamilton: The Rivalry That Forged a Nation

John Ferling has written about the Revolutionary War and the politics of independence, as well as biographies of George Washington and John Adams. He is professor emeritus of history at the University of West Georgia and is the author of the award-winning A Leap in the Dark: The Struggle to Create the American Republic. He and his wife, Carol, live near Atlanta.