Civil Rights

36 years ago, more than 15,000 people marched through Forsyth County during the Brotherhood March. Coinciding with the newly created Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the 1987 demonstration made national headlines when it brought attention to one of the last surviving sundown counties in Georgia.

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 Birth of a Nation’s success and wide distribution increased national interest in the post-Civil War Klan. In Atlanta, the film served as an inspiration and a guide for the leaders of two early 20th-century Atlanta organizations with close connections to Stone Mountain—the modern Ku Klux Klan and the United Daughters of the Confederacy.

How did the world’s largest Confederate monument end up outside of Atlanta? What should be done, if anything, with it? With these questions in mind, Atlanta History Center explores the controversial history through online resources and an upcoming documentary.

Second Sunday was an important discussion group in Atlanta. It was an affirming group for Atlanta’s Black gay and bisexual men who wanted to discuss issues unique to them in the late 1990s and early 2000s. 

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.

Like many professional Black Atlantans of yesteryear, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spent a lot of time at the Most Worshipful Prince Hall Grand Lodge of Georgia. Because of his close relationship with the MWPHGLG, some have speculated that King joined the lodge and became a Prince Hall Freemason before his death.

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.

Board of Park Commission Minute Books hold significant information, reflecting the intersectionality of race, gender, and class in urban spaces during the early twentieth century.

We created a guide to help Georgians prepare to exercise their right to vote, select the method by which they vote, and to identify and report instances of voter intimidation––on November 2 and beyond.

This summer, along with history and civics organizations across the country, we invite you to join in a program dedicated to the Civic Season.

In 1962, Mayor Ivan Allen, Jr. ordered the construction of a barricade served to sever the main line connecting the white and Black sections of the Cascade Heights neighborhood.

For more than fifty years, Ethel Mae Matthews worked tirelessly for greater welfare rights for Atlanta’s poor and disabled.