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What is the value of a liberal arts education today? Academics — especially in the humanities — are often the objects of public criticism, if not dismissal, because of the “irrelevance” of their work. How does a college student majoring in, say, history or literature find a job after graduation? One scholar’s career, however, can help us recast this question of relevance.

A horrific event in Atlanta’s past changed the course of civil and human rights in the United States. On Sept. 22, 1906, whites began rampaging through Atlanta’s downtown streets and continued for three days.

When it was over, as many as 25 to 40 African Americans were dead, while only two whites died.

Lindbergh can be credited for helping Atlanta develop a taste for aviation. On Oct. 11, 1927, Lindbergh was given a hero’s welcome by 20,000 people at Grant Field where Lind bergh called on Atlantans’ “good will” to be “generous” in their view of “passenger and freight air service” (yes, there would be costs) and to recognize that a new day was dawning for commercial aviation.

In 1923 a quiet and withdrawn 21-year-old college dropout rode his motorcycle from Florida to Sumter County, Georgia, just outside Americus. He had a dream to purchase a biplane, which were being sold in crates as surplus left over from World War I.

When Sherman began the Atlanta Campaign in the spring of 1864, his goal was to drive deep into the South and, in accordance with Union general Ulysses Grant’s instructions, engage Confederate general Joseph Johnston’s army. Grant's orders were “to break it up and to get into the interior of the enemy’s country as far as you can, inflicting all the damage you can against their war resources.”