Oglethorpe University began its career as a liberal arts and sciences university in 1835 in the community of Midway, Georgia, not too far from, what at that time, was the state’s capital, Milledgeville. The Civil War interrupted Oglethorpe’s progression and the university closed its doors in 1862. In 1870 Oglethorpe relocated and reopened in Atlanta […]
Category: Stories of Atlanta
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She knew it when
In 1826 the State of Georgia ordered a transportation survey to be undertaken. Ostensibly, the purpose of the survey was to evaluate the feasibility of building a canal through North Georgia and up into the frontier of Tennessee. Such a conveyance, it was reasoned, would allow Georgia merchants to gain access to the northern part […]
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The Stuff of Space
It is an iconic image, to say the least. Astronaut Alan Shepard, in his full spacesuit, standing on the surface of the moon…swinging at a golf ball. Amid all of the high tech, “get me to the moon and back” gear aboard the Apollo 14 mission, Shepard had smuggled a makeshift golf club and some […]
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He made the best out of what he could find
As sure as there is breakfast, lunch and dinner, there is snacking. Satisfying those between-meal cravings is a need we all have. While some people exercise discipline where consumption of snacks are concerned, most of us, at one time or another, have succumbed to the snacking temptation. Snacking certainly is not a new innovation. It […]
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That ball is REALLY out of here!
Atlanta’s major league baseball team, the Braves, began their Atlanta baseball history in 1966, but baseball’s history in Georgia predates the Atlanta Braves by nearly 100 years. Before the Braves, there were the Atlanta Crackers, a member of the Southern League and the Atlanta Black Crackers, charter members of the Negro Southern League. Though they […]
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This one changed the game
It is obvious that for pretty much everything there had to be a beginning, a first, something that got the ball rolling Sometimes if you’re the first you get to control the category. The name of your product actually becomes the name of all products in the same category: Coke, Kleenex, Jello, Xerox, Gatorade, Cuties. […]
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Only one team can ever make this claim.
When asked to name something that is quintessentially American, right after apple pie people usually will say…baseball. It is a long-held belief that baseball is, in fact, America’s national pastime. And while there are many who maintain that football has eclipsed baseball in American popularity, it is hard to argue with the facts of baseball’s […]
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Not so fast
This week’s story comes to us from Saporta Report reader and all-around Atlanta history buff Greg Hodges who wrote to ask if we knew the story of Richard Petty’s 1959 victory at Atlanta’s Lakewood Speedway. We did not and it turns out that it is just our kind of story. Long-time Atlantans will remember the […]
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The value of getting involved
A graduate of the school now known as Spelman College, she was a teacher in Atlanta and the mother of a young son. Searching for a way for parents in Atlanta – and elsewhere – to get involved in their chilren’s schooling, she laid the groundwork for an education icon.
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A once in a lifetime visit, and then it was gone
When the 1895 Cotton States Exposition opened in Atlanta over 120 years ago, it represented the culmination of years of planning and fund raising on the part of the exposition’s organizers. It was a big-time undertaking costing over $2 million dollars, which, by today’s currency standards, equates to around $57 million dollars. The exposition was […]
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A controversial approach
In 1895, Atlanta put its best foot forward for all to see with the Cotton States and International Exposition. It was a coming out party of sorts for Atlanta and designed to show the world that Atlanta had moved past its pre-civil war mentality and had taken its rightful place as the leader of the […]
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The return of “Uncle Billy”
In November of 1864, having occupied Atlanta for a little over two months, William Sherman left the city to continue his march to the sea. About three miles out, he paused briefly and gazed back at Atlanta. Years later he wrote of that moment, “Behind us lay Atlanta smoldering and in ruins, the black smoke […]
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Off we go
It seemed like a good idea but, after the outsider gave his speech, it became a great idea.
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The Dragon from Below
Roger Babson is the founder of the Gravity Research Foundation, an organization with the stated purpose of studying, understanding and, ultimately, harnessing the force of gravity. it was the childhood drowning of his older sister in a river near Gloucester, Massachusetts that sparked Babson’s life-long interest in finding a way to control the effects of […]
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Aunt Geekie’s gift
In her more than two-decades-long opera career, Atlanta-born Mattiwilda Dobbs performed to acclaim on stages around the world. Along the way, she made history time and again, although, never on stage in Atlanta. It’s the story of a much-delayed hometown debut in this week’s Stories of Atlanta.
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$5
Five dollars does not go very far these days in Atlanta – or most other places, for that matter. But, there was a time not so very long ago when five dollars could buy a lifetime of memories. One of those times is the subject of this installment of Stories of Atlanta.
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Gift from France
The Woodruff Arts Center complex is home to some of the City’s premiere arts organizations. The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Alliance Theatre, and High Museum of Art all reside within its walls. The artistic theme continues on the Center’s grounds with other works of art situated around the campus. Amid these is a piece with a […]
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A bold move
Unlike today, where name-calling is a political sport, calling someone a traitor in 1848 apparently meant something. People were actually offended. Consider the example of Georgia Supreme Court Associate Justice Francis Cone, who used the word “traitor” when describing Little Alex…and to Little Alex, that was going too far. Fair warning, it doesn’t end well […]
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Rules, regulations and fines
It’s pretty easy to imagine the amount of difficulty the newly chartered City of Atlanta experienced trying to bring the rule of law to a community that, since its inception, essentially had no laws. Atlanta, in its early days, was little more than a rowdy, frontier, railroad camp and, in the minds of many of […]
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Man of the house
When George moved from his home in Alabama to the City of Atlanta, he was only 16 years old but, none the less, he was acutely aware that the responsibility for the well-being of his mother and his 5-siblings rested squarely on his shoulders. Amid the fervor and chaos of an Atlanta recovering from the […]
