Atlanta History Center launches five-year democracy initiative

Democracy is Not a Spectator Sport on Airline Street. (Photo by Kelly Jordan)
For more than a year now, the United States has been embroiled in racial, social and political unrest, culminating with the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
In response, The Atlanta History Center is launching a five-year plan of scholarship and exhibits to get Americans focused on repairing the country’s fractured democracy in time for its 250th birthday. Going forward, democracy will be central to its research, scholarship and storytelling, said Atlanta History Center President Sheffield Hale.
“What makes it particularly concerning now is that more and more people are–whether they realize it or not–being attracted to anti-democratic, authoritarian rhetoric from what used to be the fringe left and right,” Hale told some of the city’s most influential decision-makers at a Dec. 13 meeting of The Rotary Club of Atlanta.