Transportation and Technology

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.

Norfolk Southern, one of the nation’s major railroad systems, recently relocated its headquarters to Atlanta. The company celebrated its move with a major donation of archival materials from predecessor company Southern Railway to Atlanta History Center. We look back on the history of Southern Railway and reflect on the importance of this iconic railroad to Atlanta and the Southeast.

Seventy-one. That’s a current count on how many streets there are in Atlanta that bear the name, “Peachtree.” This is the first in a series of blog posts exploring the history behind popular Atlanta street names.

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.

Learn off-the-script facts about railroads and the making of Atlanta.

In advance of the 1996 Olympic Games, organizers in Atlanta worked to harness the power of new technologies to showcase the city as cutting edge and progressive—just as many host cities before them had done.

Linda Fay reacts to the first airport security instrument tested at Atlanta Municipal Airport (now Hartsfield-Jackson) ca. 1960.

An unidentified woman brings her horse to a halt at a WHOA sign.

E. E. McKennon pauses her welding work on a ship at the J.A. Jones Construction Company shipyard in May, 1943.

Aftermath of an airplane crash at Municipal Airport (later Hartsfield-Jackson) on June 20, 1937.

Preserving history is never easy—it’s a complicated decision whether to leave fragile historical artifacts in place, or to move them for preservation and public access.

Through the 1850s, Atlanta grew from a railroad junction to a burgeoning regional center.