Vocabulary – Maynard Holbrock Jackson Budget Contractors Incumbent Polarized Terminal Tribute Glossary Budget: noun; a total sum of money set aside or needed for a purpose, as a construction budget. Contractors: noun; a person who makes an agreement with another party or parties to perform work at a certain price or rate. Incumbent: adjective; holding […]

Maynard Holbrock Jackson Suggested Readings Frederick Allen, Atlanta Rising: The Invention of an International City, 1946-1996 (Atlanta: Longstreet Press, 1996). “A Champion for Atlanta: Maynard Jackson, a Memorial Section,” Atlanta Journal- Constitution, June 29, 2003. David R. Colburn and Jeffrey S. Adler, eds., African-American Mayors: Race, Politics, and the American City (Urbana: University of Illinois […]

Woodstock may have gotten the headlines but Atlanta was rockin’ a whole month earlier. The Atlanta International Pop Festival of 1969 was a two-day music festival at the Atlanta International Raceway over the Fourth of July weekend. The brainchild of promoter Alex Cooley, tickets cost only $12.50 & $16, and a crowd of 120,000 drank, […]

She will forever be taking that midnight train to Georgia. Gladys Knight, the “Empress of Soul,” was born in Atlanta in 1944. At age 7, she gained national fame by taking top honors on Ted Mack’s “Original Amateur Hour,” forerunner to “American Idol.” At a 1952 party, Gladys began an impromptu performance with family members. […]

They were soul men long before the Blues Brothers. Florida native Samuel Moore and Georgian David Prater were gospel music veterans when they joined together in 1961 to form the rhythm and blues duo Sam and Dave. From 1965 to ’68 the duo worked at Stax Records in Memphis with Songwriters Isaac Hayes and David […]

The heavyweight boxing champion called the “Cincinnati Cobra” was actually a Georgia native. Ezzard Charles was born in Lawrenceville in 1921 and moved to Cincinnati when he was young. He fought in boxing’s golden age, when the sport was second only to baseball in popularity. Charles is among the pantheon of great boxers and he […]

Her signature song was “I’m Sorry” but there was nothing sorry about the career of Brenda Lee…one of the first singers to be launched to stardom by the new medium of TV. She was born Brenda Mae Tarpley in Atlanta and grew up in Conyers and Lithonia. She won a talent show at age five […]

Richard Wayne Penniman is not a name most people associate with the beginning of rock n’ roll, but few people did more to make rock one of the hearthstones of 20th-century American culture than the man known as Little Richard. Penniman was born into a family of 12 children in Macon and grew up singing […]

They were the quintessential college rock band of the 1980s, working in the town Rolling Stone called “the best college music scene in the country.” Michael Stipe was an art student at the University of Georgia when he met Peter Buck at the Wuxtry Record Store in Athens. Together with Mike Mills and Bill Berry, […]

It was October and the trees were golden…and not just the trees. Benjamin Parks was walking through the woods of north Georgia when he kicked a stone. There were lots of stones in the woods, but the color of this one caught Parks’ eye. It turned out to be gold. Five other people claimed to […]