Civil Rights

It took the Supreme Court to seat Julian Bond in the Georgia Legislature. Born in Nashville in 1940, graduated from a Quaker school in Pennsylvania, he came to Atlanta to attend Morehouse College. Bond led nonviolent protests that helped integrate Atlanta lunch counters, theaters and parks. In 1960, he was one of the founders of […]

He courageously put his life on the line many times during the civil rights movement and has become one of the most respected members of Congress. John Lewis was born to sharecroppers in Alabama, in 1940. He encountered the ugliness and brutality of racism while participating in sit-ins as a student at Fisk University in […]

She was the first woman and first African-American to lie in state at the Georgia State Capitol rotunda. Coretta Scott was born in 1927 in Alabama and studied music education at Antioch College in Ohio. After graduation she enrolled in The New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, where she met a young Boston University […]

Clashes with the Ku Klux Klan began Joseph Lowery's life long fight for equality. The man who became one of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s chief lieutenants was born in Huntsville, Alabama. Early encounters with bigotry would shape the direction of his life as a Methodist minister. Inspired by Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott, […]

He was a high school dropout who would be governor. Born in Atlanta, Lester Maddox worked at the Bell Bomber factory in Marietta during World War II.  He opened the Pickrick Restaurant in Atlanta in 1947. It became the focal point of his fierce opposition to integration and civil rights. He famously chased black patrons […]

He was Atlanta’s mayor for eight years in the 1960s, and he was the only Southern politician to testify in favor of the Civil Rights Act. Ivan Allen Jr. was born in Atlanta in 1911 and graduated from Georgia Tech before joining his father’s office supply company. Allen served in World War II. Afterwards, he […]

She was one of the first prominent white Southerners to denounce segregation, and she was a controversial figure all her life. Lillian Smith was born in Florida in 1897 and moved to Georgia as a teenager. After a stint in China, she began to speak out against Jim Crow, calling segregation “spiritual lynching.” From her […]

The Civil Rights movement boasted many heroes; some, sadly, unsung. Thomas Brewer was born in Alabama in 1894, and earned a medical degree at Meharry Medical College in Nashville. In 1920, Brewer moved to Columbus, Georgia, opened a practice and became a leader in the thriving black professional community. He helped establish the Columbus chapter […]

A Georgia native founded the most influential black newspaper of the 20th century. Robert Sengstacke Abbott was born on St. Simon’s island in 1868 and raised in Savannah. He attended law school in Chicago. When Abbott couldn’t find a job as a lawyer, he turned to journalism and founded the Chicago Defender. Within a decade […]

It was one of the most audacious military movements in history—and one of the most controversial. U.S. General William Tecumseh Sherman captured Atlanta in September 1864 and two months later was ready to move. He sent General George Thomas to deal with the Confederate Army moving toward Nashville, while he took the rest of his […]