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The Economist reviews Atlanta History Center’s new documentary Monument: The Untold Story of Stone Mountain, calling the film “powerful.”

In September 1906, a white mob brutalized and terrorized Atlanta’s Black residents, resulting in the deaths of 25 Black Atlantans, the wounding of hundreds of Blacks, and the destruction of many Black businesses and homes. This period of racial violence has been passed down in history as a race “riot,” but “massacre” may be a more apt term.

The Christian Methodist Episcopal, founded in 1870 in Jackson, Tennessee, was the first Protestant African American denomination established in the South. With more than 330 CME churches in Georgia alone, it has become one of the premier Christian denominations for African American worship and religious life.   

“One Hundred Years of Georgia Women Legislators” is a Historical Series that will not only tell the story of Georgia’s first women state and federal legislative representatives and highlight other notable Georgia “firsts” that have held legislative positions over the course of the last century to now, but it also highlights the effect these women have had on Georgia, the South, and the United States of America.

Of the approximately 75,000 Afghans evacuated to the United States when the Taliban took over Afghanistan in August 2021, more than 1,500 came here to Georgia, with the vast majority resettling in Metro Atlanta. The arrival of record numbers of new families in a short time has tested the resources of the area’s resettlement agencies. So, informal networks of people have stepped up to help the new arrivals, some of whom have first-hand experience with the challenges facing these Afghan families.

Muhammad Ali’s 1970 comeback fight in Atlanta against Jerry Quarry at the Atlanta Municipal Auditorium on October 26, 1970, is often relegated to the footnotes of Ali’s legacy despite its crucial role in the growth of Atlanta and the rebirth of his boxing career.

When Azhar Mehmood and his wife Farah opened Mughals in 1994, they not only invited Atlantans to experience authentic Pakistani food, but also helped lay the foundation for Pakistani cultural life in metro Atlanta.

From 1949 when it opened until the late 1960s, the Royal Peacock was Atlanta’s premier nightclub. Located at 186 Auburn Avenue, people dressed to the nines would line up in lines that wrapped around the block just to see the best entertainers in the country including James Brown, Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, and Marvin Gaye. The club helped create the fertile soil that allowed Atlanta to become the hip-hop and rhythm and blues capital of the South.

Long before workers at Starbucks and Amazon began fighting for the right to collectively bargain, workers at Fulton Bag and Cotton Mills fought to unionize, creating a blueprint for those in the present-day.

For decades silverback gorilla, Willie B., was not only the premier attraction at Zoo Atlanta, but also one of the most famous gorillas in the world. When Willie B. died in 2000, thousands of Atlantans attended his memorial cementing his status as a true Atlanta legend.

When driving down a busy street in Atlanta, you may find yourself on a different road without making a turn. These seemingly nonsensical street name changes are due to past residential segregation practices enacted when white Atlantans did not want to share the same address as Blacks.

The Negro Motorist Green Book (later Negro Travelers’ Green Book) was an annual guidebook for African American travelers. First published in 1936, the pamphlet provided a list of Black-friendly restaurants, bars, hotels, clubs, lounges, and services in places across the country including Atlanta.

Throughout the civil rights movement in Atlanta, soul food restaurants were hubs of change where civil rights leaders could convene, converse, and strategize, and in times of terror and violence, these places were retreats where leaders could plan their next tactical moves.

Celebrate Atlanta’s rich musicality with this tour of places with ties to hip-hop history.