BIPOC

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 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.   

A 30-minute documentary film produced by Atlanta History Center that explores the history of the monument from all angles, including the origin of the carving, the complicated relationships between the carving and contemporaneous historical events, and the key players who worked for its completion. The film is meant to inspire deeper learning and constructive conversations about this monument and what it represents to many different people.

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.

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. 

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.

Drawn to beautiful clothes and unique designs early in life, Ann Moore pursued a career in couture fashion during a time when the profession, always competitive, was especially out of reach for African Americans. Her hard work and determination carried her from Atlanta to Detroit as well as to the most exclusive fashion locales in New York and Paris. 30 of her pieces are housed in Atlanta History Museum’s extensive Fashion and Textile collections.

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.

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.

Drawn from the collections of Kenan Research Center, the photography in this exhibition reflects the rich stories of Atlanta’s historically black colleges and universities, the Civil Rights Movement, and those of African American educators, entertainers, and athletes.