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 re segregation, 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.

Two one-week residential programs for 72 K-12 educators on the civil rights movement and desegregation 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 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 begins with Atlanta University and continues to 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 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, legal desegregation, and integration to a multicultural and pluralistic society. Teachers from middle and high school can bring home lessons for many subjects for their students, colleagues, and districts.

Two one-week workshops for 80 school teachers on southern segregation and the Civil Rights Movement in Atlanta.

The "Problem of the Color Line" Institute will use Atlanta landmarks to trace the rise and fall of the color line. Sites in Atlanta, the capital of the Civil Rights Movement, are uniquely concentrated to help teachers tell the story of the development of segregation, the establishment of viable black community institutions, and the struggle to end discrimination. In advance of site visits, teachers will hear lectures, examine historical documents, and read primary and secondary sources so that they will be able to explore the Civil Rights past at the landmarks sites. Among the sites to be studied and visited are: the Atlanta University Center colleges--home to W.E.B. DuBois, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Birth Home, and Piedmont Park--the site of Booker T. Washington's Atlanta Compromise speech. Teachers will learn how to prepare students to go to landmarks sites to explore the history that transpired there. They will produce lesson plans to use these sites to teach American history.

Two one-week Landmarks workshops for eighty school teachers on southern segregation and the civil rights movement in Atlanta.

"The Problem of the Color Line: Atlanta Landmarks and Civil Rights History" consists of two one-week NEH Landmarks of American History and Culture Workshops held during summer 2012 for eighty school teachers on southern segregation and the Civil Rights movement in Atlanta. The project is anchored in an observation made by W. E. B. Du Bois in The Souls of Black Folk (1903): "The Problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line." In addition to Atlanta University's Stone Hall, where Du Bois penned this famous reflection, the project uses other Atlanta sites as touchstones for examining the history of the "color line," race relations, and the Civil Rights movement in twentieth-century America. Sites include Piedmont Park, the site of Booker T. Washington's 1895 "Atlanta Compromise" speech; the residence of Alonzo Herndon, a former slave who became Atlanta's first black millionaire; the Fox Theatre, which still bears the marks of the segregation era; the State Capitol, which retains monuments to both Jim Crow and the triumph over the color line; and the Auburn Avenue National Landmark District (the site of Ebenezer Baptist Church) and the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site. Georgia State University faculty members Timothy J. Crimmins, Glenn Eskew, Clifford Kuhn, and Akinyele Umoja address such topics as the South before the color line, the debate between W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington, the Atlanta Race Riot of 1906, and race relations in Atlanta from the 1930s to the 1990s. In addition, Dana White (Emory University), Beverly Guy Sheftall (Spelman College), and Vickie Crawford (Morehouse College) lecture about patterns of segregation in Atlanta during the Jim Crow era and women in the Civil Rights movement. Readings are drawn from varied primary sources (such as Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk, Ray Baker's Following the Color Line, and autobiographies by Walter White and John Lewis), secondary works (such as William Chafe's Remembering Jim Crow and Aldon Morris's Origins of the Civil Rights Movement), and literary texts (from such writers as Margaret Mitchell, Joel Chandler Harris ["Uncle Remus"], Flannery O'Connor, Alice Walker, and Tom Wolfe).

To support planning for a series of multi-institutional collaborative programs on the ideas of Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, and W. E. B. DuBois.