The Problem of the Color Line: Atlanta Landmarks and Civil Rights History

FAIN: BH-50613-14

Georgia State University Research Foundation, Inc. (Atlanta, GA 30302-3999)
Timothy J. Crimmins (Project Director: March 2014 to April 2017)

Two one-week workshops for seventy-two school teachers on southern segregation and the Civil Rights movement in Atlanta.

At the core of the workshop is the weighty issue of race reform in a contested southern past. Atlanta, destroyed in the Civil War, was rebuilt on the ashes of slavery as a New South city where memorials to the Old South became symbols of white supremacy that relegated African Americans to legal and economic second-class status. The struggle of resistance follows from W. E. B. Du Bois to Martin Luther King. Atlanta has an ideal nexus of historic sites where teachers can explore these struggles, from the legacy of slavery, the tragedy of war and defeat, the promise of emancipation, the betrayal of Reconstruction, the terror of redemption and race riot, the erection of the color line and resistance to segregation, the civil rights movement, desegregation, integration and resegregation, to a multicultural and pluralistic society. Participants will see how race relations figured into the landscape as Americans who once venerated the civil war dead now memorialize civil rights martyrs.

Media Coverage

Some history lessons are black and white (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Bill Torpy
Publication: Atlanta Journal Constitution
Date: 7/26/2015
Abstract: This is an article that covers a workshop lecture and field trip that addressed the evolution of lost cause mentality in the South and the color line that emerged. It includes an account of a visit to the Fox Theater where participants used the exterior steps to visit what had been the segregated "colored" section of the theater.
URL: http://www.myajc.com/news/news/local/some-history-lessons-are-black-and-white/nm5sh/#3fed49c9.3518361.735803