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

FAIN: BH-281173-21

Georgia State University Research Foundation, Inc. (Atlanta, GA 30302-3999)
Timothy J. Crimmins (Project Director: March 2021 to November 2024)

Two one-week workshops for 72 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 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.