Recently, Atlanta actor Brenda Bynum introduced me to Helen Matthews Lewis through a brilliant one-person play. The locale was the Craddock Center of Cherry Log, Georgia, an educational and cultural venue for children, families, and communities in southern Appalachia. Helen Lewis is a native Georgian and professional sociologist who helped found the discipline of Appalachian Studies, an academic movement that combines scholarship, teaching, and community engagement in the South’s mountain region.
Tag: Atlanta History
Posted inMain Slider, Stories of Atlanta
Sort of a milestone
With the posting of this week’s story, we reach a milestone, of sorts. When we first started the Stories of Atlanta, we really didn’t have a plan. We just had all of these facts about the City of Atlanta that we found interesting and, with the thought that others might also find them interesting, we […]
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Eugene Bullard: boxer, soldier, fighter pilot, spy, and elevator operator
This week guest columnist CHRIS DOBBS, editorial assistant for the New Georgia Encyclopedia, shares the story of Eugene Bullard, son of a former slave, and the first black fighter pilot.
Eugene Bullard was born in Columbus, Georgia, in 1895. As an expatriate in France, he became a boxer, soldier, fighter pilot, business owner, and spy. During his final years, in the United States, he was an elevator operator. Bullard’s story is particularly engaging. He was obviously a tight spring of potential as a boy, and it’s fascinating to see how high he flew as soon as the environment around him allowed it. The difference between his life in the United States and his life in Europe lends his life its striking cinematic scale.
Posted inMain Slider, Stories of Atlanta
For a woman of her time, she took the road less traveled
Rebecca was older than Atlanta. By the time the tiny railroad terminus had been carved out of the north Georgia wilderness, she had lived for 3 years and, by the time she reached the age of 7, Rebecca was lucky enough to be given a seat on the very first passenger train to leave the […]
Posted inLatest News, Main Slider, Maria Saporta
Remembering the legacy Commerce Club
By Maria Saporta It has been more than five years since the Commerce Club moved from its original location near Five Points to the 191 Peachtree building. The prestigious Commerce Club is now more than 55 years old, and its Atlanta history runs deep. That was obvious on Saturday, Feb. 6 when there was a […]
Posted inLatest News, Main Slider, Maria Saporta
Shutze’s Maddox House on Tuxedo Road to be torn down on Wednesday
Another one is about to bite the dust.
Despite the last minute hopes that owner Dallas Clement would explore options to save the Tuxedo Road house designed by renowned Atlanta architect Phillip Trammel Shutze, historic building is set to be demolished on Wednesday, Feb. 3.
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Why history matters
This week guest columnist PEARL MCHANEY, a Georgia State University professor, discusses how voices from our past speak to our present.
With inflammatory rhetoric about citizenship, the value of lives black, brown, and white, and the memorialization/revision of history, I feel that hearing the carefully written words of Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois, Richard Wright, and Ernest Gaines will help to ground us in our shared past and give us opportunity to engage in reasoned discourse.
Posted inMain Slider, Stories of Atlanta
The Measure of a Man’s Character
Our story this week is about Atlanta-born Walter White. On the surface, it is the story of a man who found his calling, applied himself and eventually took a place on the national stage. But in reality, this story is much more than a chronicle of a man’s career path. Walter White was born in […]
Posted inColumns, David Pendered, Main Slider
‘Lake Rabun’ frames lake’s 100-year history through prism of Atlanta’s growth
A new book by a noted Atlanta developer places the 100-year history of Lake Rabun in the context of Atlanta’s 20th century development boom, and the men who led it.
Posted inMain Slider, Stories of Atlanta
From Atlanta He Sold to the World
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 are able to eat healthy snacks, many of us cannot resist the lure of less healthy foods. Snacking certainly is not a new innovation. It goes back, in some […]
Posted inMain Slider, Stories of Atlanta
It was unusual, unheard of and it happened in Atlanta
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. […]
Posted inMain Slider, Stories of Atlanta
It’s unlikely that this record will ever be broken
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 […]
Posted inMain Slider, Stories of Atlanta
The race does not always go to the fastest…or does it?
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 […]
Posted inMain Slider, Stories of Atlanta
He had a lot of nerve to come riding into town like that
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 […]
Posted inMain Slider, Stories of Atlanta
It’s all in how you deliver the message
They say that when you die, whether you’re going to heaven or hell, you have to go through Atlanta first. Though made popular by Atlanta’s very busy airport, that saying actually originated back in the day when Atlanta was a major railroad junction. At its peak, over 300 trains a day came and went through […]
Posted inWABE
Atlantans fight to restore Gaines Hall after fire
Gaines Hall, built in 1869 as a dorm for Atlanta University, caught fire on Aug. 20. The next day, the Atlanta Fire Department said the historic building should be torn down for safety reasons. But local preservationists immediately objected, saying Gaines Hall can and should be saved.
Atlanta has a pretty dismal record when it comes to preservation.
Posted inMain Slider, Stories of Atlanta
The dragon that reaches out and grabs you
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 […]
Posted inMain Slider, Stories of Atlanta
This week, it’s a time travel story…with a twist
Time travel. It has been a part of the plot of many a movie over the years and, no doubt, the daydream of almost everyone at one time or another. Who hasn’t thought of what they could do if only time travel were possible? From sparing the world the pain of a future calamity or […]
Posted inMain Slider, Stories of Atlanta
His life might have been very different without his stepfather
Donn’s father was a well-respected mathematics and psychology professor. He was, in fact, the chairman of the mathematics department of an Oklahoma university. Unfortunately for Donn, he lost his father at the age of six months to Leukemia. The family moved to Atlanta, where Donn would graduate from Booker T. Washington high school. It was […]
