If there was a Mt. Rushmore for civil rights icons, Andrew Young would be on it. But his achievements go well beyond civil rights: Young has served as congressman, United Nations ambassador and mayor of Atlanta. Andrew Jackson Young Jr. was born in New Orleans in 1932. He became involved in the civil rights movement […]
She just wanted to be known as Mrs. John Marsh. Margaret Mitchell was her maiden name. Born in Atlanta in 1900, she lived away from the city only once, for a year, at Smith College. Her grandfather fought in the Civil War; her mother’s family was Irish Catholic, like the O’Hara’s of Tara. Mitchell went […]
He was the leader of the band that helped spark the southern rock movement of the 1970s. Duane Allman was born in 1946 in Nashville, and his family moved to Florida when he was eleven. Duane started playing guitar and he and his brother Gregg formed a band called the Allman Joys. It would be […]
He would box, but he would not fight. At the height of the Vietnam War in 1967, Muhammad Ali was drafted. Declaring himself a conscientous objector, he refused to serve. With his case on appeal, Ali was banned from boxing by several of the sports governing bodies. He hadn’t floated like a butterfly or stung […]
He was born in a one-room shack in Barnwell, South Carolina, in 1933. He moved to Augusta, Georgia, when he was five. His mother abandoned him, he grew up in abject poverty and was sent to jail for petty theft at fifteen. But James Brown overcame it all to become one of the most influential […]
Its unmatched beauty has been around for millennia, but the largest of Georgia’s Barrier Islands only became a National Seashore on this day in 1972. Cumberland Island is the southernmost of Georgia’s Sea Islands. This magical place is noted for having several unique ecological systems: beaches and dunes, inland maritime forests, and saltwater marshes. The […]
Howard Finster saw things; he literally had visions. They inspired him to create a universe of unusual paintings, sculpture, and drawings. A self-taught folk artist and preacher, he became one of the most important creative artists of the twentieth century. Finster was born in 1916 in Valley Head, Alabama, one of fourteen children. He saw […]
He became only the second African(-) American to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court – and one of its most controversial members. Clarence Thomas was born in Pin Point, Georgia, in 1948 and was raised by his grandfather as a devout Catholic. He planned to join the priesthood but left the seminary after encountering racial […]
He was one of the youngest persons ever to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Martin Luther King, Jr., was born in Atlanta in 1929 as Michael Luther King. His father later changed their names. He grew up on Auburn Avenue near Ebenezer Baptist Church, where his grandfather and father were pastors. King graduated from Morehouse […]
There were many firsts in his family. Born in Dallas, Texas, in 1938, Maynard Holbrook Jackson, Jr., moved to Atlanta when he was eight. His Georgia roots ran deep. His grandfather, John Wesley Dobbs, founded the Georgia Voters League. His mother was the first African-American with an Atlanta Public Library card. His aunt Mattiwilda was […]
