-
Brown v. Board of Education
Although the Declaration of Independence stated that "All men are created equal," due to the institution of slavery, this statement was not to be grounded in law in the United States until after the Civil War (and, arguably, not completely fulfilled for many years thereafter). In 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified and finally put an end to slavery. Moreover, the Fourteenth Amendment (1868) strengthened the legal rights of newly freed slaves by stating. -
Atlanta Braves
On January 20, 1871, the Boston Red Stockings were incorporated by Ivers Whitney Adams with $15,000 and the help of Harry Wright, the "Father of Professional Baseball," who had founded and managed America's first truly professional baseball team, the Cincinnati Red Stockings. Two months later, the Red Stockings became one of nine charter members of the National Association of Professional Baseball Players and the forerunner of the National League. -
International
The international cotton exposition opened in Atlanta,Georgia on October 5,1881 and ran through December 31. The exposition hosted over 1,000 exhibits representing seven countiries and every region of the U.S.A. -
William B. Hartsfield
He served as mayor for six terms (1937-41, 1942-61), longer than any other person in the city's history. Hartsfield held office during a critical period when the color line separating the races began to change and the city grew from more than 100,000 inhabitants to a metropolitan population of one million. He is credited with developing Atlanta into the aviation powerhouse that it is today and with building its image as "the City Too Busy to Hate." -
Benjamin Mays
Benjamin Elijah Mays was born on August 1, 1894 or 1895 in a rural area outside Ninety-Six, South Carolina. He was the youngest of eight children born to Louvenia Carter and Hezekiah Mays, tenant farmers and former slaves. A consistent theme in Mays's boyhood and early adulthood was his quest for education against overwhelming odds. He refused to be limited by the widespread poverty and racism of his place of birth. After some struggle he gained acceptance to Bates College in Maine. After comple -
1906 Atlatnta riot
The Atlanta race riot or Atlanta riot of 1906 was the race riot to take place in the Capital city of Georgia. -
Lester Maddox
Born in Atlanta to a working-class family on September 30, 1915, Lester Garfield Maddox grew up knowing poverty. By Lester Maddox, in September 1966, pleased to have just won the Democratic primary race for governor. Maddox
1933 he had dropped out of high school and was working at Atlantic Steel and the Works Progress Administration. In 1936 he married Virginia Cox, with whom he would remain for sixty-one years, until her death in 1997. During World War II (1941-45) Maddox worked in virginia cox -
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia. King, both a Baptist minister and civil-rights activist, had a seismic impact on race relations in the United States, beginning in the mid-1950s. Among many efforts, King headed the SCLC. Through his activism, he played a pivotal role in ending the legal segregation of African-American citizens in the South and other areas of the nation, as well as the creation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1 -
Andrew Young
Born on March 12, 1932, in New Orleans, Louisiana, Andrew Young Jr. became active in the Civil Rights Movement, working with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Entering politics, Young served in Congress, was the first African-American ambassador to the United Nations and became mayor of Atlanta. In 1981, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. -
1946 Governor's Race
1946 was a beginning for African-Americans, they could vote for Governor. -
Herman Talmadge
Herman Talmadge, son of Georgia governor Eugene Talmadge, took the governor's office briefly in 1947, and again after a special election in 1948.Herman Talmadge
for a brief time in early 1947 and again from 1948 to 1954. In 1956 Talmadge was elected to the U.S. Senate, where he served until his defeat in 1980. Talmadge, a Democrat, was governor at a time of political transition in the state, and he served in the Senate. -
Atlanta Hawks
After three years of skirmishing, the NBL and the BAA joined forces for the 1949-50 campaign. Only half of the NBL's 10 franchises survived the merger. Tri-Cities was one of the 17 teams in the newly named National Basketball Association. In their first NBA contest the Blackhawks squared off against the Denver Nuggets (unrelated to the current franchise) and earned a 93-85 win. But after six straight losses Head Coach Roger Potter was fired and Arnold "Red" Auerbach was hired in his place. Auerb -
Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was founded in April 1960, by young people who had emerged as leaders of the sit-in protest movement initiated on February 1 of that year by four black college students in Greensboro, North Carolina. Although Martin Luther King, Jr. and others had hoped that SNCC would serve as the youth wing of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the students remained fiercely independent of King and SCLC, generating their own projects. -
Hamilton Holmes and Charlayne Hunter
Hamilton Holmes is best known for desegregating Georgia's universities. One of the first two African American students admitted to the University of Georgia (UGA) in Athens in 1961, Holmes was also the first black student admitted to the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta two years later. -
Sibley Commission
Reporters gather at Atlanta's city hall on August 30, 1961, the day that the city's schools were officially integrated. The recommendations of the Sibley Commission to the state legislature in 1960 contributed to the desegregation of schools across Georgia. -
The Albany Movement
According to traditional accounts, the Albany Movement began in fall 1961 and ended in summer 1962. It was the first mass movement in the modern civil rights era to have as its goal the desegregation of an entire community, and it resulted in the jailing of more than 1,000 African Americans in Albany and surrounding rural counties. Martin Luther King Jr. was drawn into the movement in December 1961 when hundreds of black protesters, including himself, were arrested in one week. But faild badly. -
Ivan Allen Jr.
Ivan Allen Jr. served as mayor of Atlanta from 1962 to 1970. He is credited with leading the city through an era of significant physical and economic growth and with maintaining calm during the civil rights movement. In 1965 he persuaded the Braves to move to Atlanta from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Ivan Allen Jr., 1965
He is credited with leading the city through an era of significant physical and economic growth and with maintaining calm -
March on Washington
On August 28, 1963, more than 200,000 Americans gathered in Washington, D.C., for a political rally known as the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Organized by a number of civil rights and religious groups, the event was designed to shed light on the political and social challenges African Americans continued to face across the country. The march, which became a key moment in the growing struggle for civil rights in the United States, culminated in Martin Luther King Jr.speech. -
Civil Rights Act
The Civil Rights Act of 1964, which ended segregation in public places and banned employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin, is considered one of the crowning legislative achievements of the civil rights movement. First proposed by President John F. Kennedy, it survived strong opposition from southern members of Congress and was then signed into law by Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon B. Johnson. -
Atlanta Falcons
Rankin M. Smith was awarded, by the National
Football League, a franchise for the city of Atlanta
for $8.5 million. At the time there were 14 NFL
franchises in existence, eight AFL clubs. Officially,
Atlanta became the 23rd professional football club
in existence, the 15th in the NFL prior to the merger.
An average of 56,526 people filled Atlanta Stadium to
watch the Falcons finish their inaugural season at 3–11.
The Falcons claimed their first victory on November
20, defeating the New York Gian -
Maynard Jackson Elected Mayor
Elected mayor of Atlanta in 1973, Maynard Jackson was the first African American to serve as mayor of a major southern city. Jackson served eight years and then returned for a third term in 1990. During his tenure, Jackson increased the amount of city business given to minority-owned firms and added a new term. -
Jimmy Carter in Georia
Jimmy Carter, the only Georgian elected president of the United States, held the office for one term, 1977-81. His previous public service included a stint in the U.S. Navy, two senate terms in the Georgia General Assembly, and one term as governor of Georgia (1971-75). After being defeated in the presidential election of 1980, he founded the Carter Center, a nonpartisan public policy center in Atlanta. -
1996 Olympic Games
From July 19 until August 4, 1996, Atlanta hosted the Centennial Summer Olympic Games, an event that was without doubt the largest undertaking in the city's history. The goal of civic leaders was to promote Atlanta's image as an international city ready to play an important role in global commerce. The opening ceremony on July 19, 1996, attracted a capacity crowd of 83,000 to the Olympic Stadium for a display honoring southern culture and the one-hundredth anniversary of the modern Olympic -
1956 State Flag
Soon after the formation of the Confederate States of America, delegates from the seceded states
met as a provisional government in Montgomery, Alabama. Among the early actions was appointment of
a committee to propose a new flag and seal for the Confederacy. The proposal adopted by the committee
called for a flag consisting of a red field divided by a white band one-third the width of the field, thus
producing three bars of equal width. The flag had a square blue union the height of two bars.
