recreation

August 23, 1961

Desegregation in Atlanta

When four African Americans came to Atlanta’s Bitsy Grant Tennis Center on this day in 1961, they found a sign waiting for them: closed for repairs. White Atlantans fiercely resisted desegregating the city’s parks, pools, and golf courses. City buses had always been contested terrain but Atlanta’s recreational facilities had by long custom been “whites […]

July 9, 1936

Chattahoochee National Forest

Anyone who has ever taken a walk in the woods in north Georgia knows that the Chattahoochee National Forest is one of the state’s great treasures. But it wasn’t always so. At the turn of the 20th century, the forest had been abused and overused, the victims of hydraulic mining, overcutting and poor land and […]

July 4, 1970

Peachtree Road Race

It’s big now, but not to begin with. In 1970, 110 runners lined up for the Atlanta Track Club’s first Peachtree Road Race. The starting line was at the old Sears building at Peachtree and Roswell Road. The finish was 6.2 miles away at Central City Park, now Woodruff Park. Carling Brewery sponsored the first […]