From Auburn Avenue to the world: 100 moments in Black Atlanta history

In 1926, Carter G. Woodson launched Negro History Week to preserve a record too often erased, ignored or distorted. What began inside Black schools and churches as a corrective effort has grown into Black History Month, now marking its 100th anniversary.

That century-long arc reflects a larger truth: Black history has never been static or confined to a single month. It is living, shaped continuously by the places where Black people have built power, culture and community.

Few cities embody that truth more clearly than Atlanta. From Auburn Avenue to the state Capitol, from college campuses to the airport, Black Atlantans have shaped movements that reached far beyond the city’s borders. Atlanta has been a laboratory for Black political power, a cradle of civil rights leadership, a hub of Black media and business and a proving ground for modern Black self-determination in the South.

This timeline is not exhaustive. It is a working record of moments when Black Atlanta and Georgia bent history. Some entries mark expansion and triumph; others reflect violence, displacement and unfinished struggle. Some events and people are notable, while others have been lost in time.

Together, they show that progress has rarely moved in a straight line, even in a city long celebrated as exceptional.

As Black History Month turns 100, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution offers both reflection and reckoning. It traces how Atlanta helped shape national Black history while revealing the tensions, contradictions and costs beneath the city’s mythology. What emerges is a map — of where we have been, how we arrived here and how much remains unwritten.

The 1920s: Foundations

1926: Early observances of Negro History Week appear in Atlanta schools and churches; Hosea Williams is born in Attapulgus, Georgia.

1927: Tiger Flowers, a Savannah native and world heavyweight boxing champion, dies.

When boxing great Tiger Flowers died in the fall of 1927, 75,000 viewed his casket to pay their final respects. (Courtesy of Atlanta History Center)

1928: The “Atlanta Daily World” is founded on Auburn Avenue.

1929: Martin Luther King Jr. is born in Atlanta.

THE 1930s: Building Institutions

1930: Ray Charles is born in Albany.

1931: Juliette Derricotte, a dean of women at Fisk University, and one of her students, Nina Johnson, died after being denied treatment at a segregated Georgia hospital after a traffic accident. The Derricotte—Johnson tragedy galvanizes Black student activism and protest in Atlanta.

1932: Angelo Herndon is arrested in Atlanta for labor organizing; Little Richard is born in Macon.

Angelo Herndon, 19, is shown in court in 1933, just before he was sentenced. He had come South with a message of Communism, but was convicted in Atlanta under a statute passed 60 years ago. He was sentenced to 18 to 20 years in prison. The jury found Herndon guilty after deliberating for more than two hours and recommended mercy. (The Associated Press)

1933: Sweet Auburn continues as the “center of Black opportunity” in the South, anchored by Citizens Trust Bank, Atlanta’s Black-owned bank.

1934: Scholar W.E.B. Du Bois returns to Atlanta University and begins writing “Black Reconstruction.”

1935: The Cascade Theatre opens, expanding Black entertainment during the Great Depression.

1936: University Homes, the nation’s first federally funded public housing project for African Americans, opens in Atlanta.

1937: The Top Hat Club (later the Royal Peacock) and Hotel Royal open on Auburn Avenue.

1938: Maynard Jackson is born.

1939: Hattie McDaniel is barred from the Atlanta premiere of “Gone With the Wind” because of Jim Crow laws. She later made history by becoming the first Black actor to win an Academy Award, earning an Oscar for her role as Mammy.

Hattie McDaniel was a major Hollywood star by the time she won the Oscar in 1940 for her role in the film Gone with the Wind. But Many African Americans at the time felt that she had been typecast in roles that perpetrated many difficult-to-accept racial stereotypes.

1940s: Systemic violence

1940: Benjamin E. Mays becomes president of Morehouse College.

1941: Otis Redding is born in Dawson, Georgia.

1942: Atlanta enacts a slum-clearance ordinance, displacing the Rose Hill Black community to create Candler Park ball fields.

1943: Grace Towns Hamilton becomes executive director of the Atlanta Urban League.

1944: Gladys Knight is born in Atlanta.

Ted Mack, right, master of ceremonies for "The Original Amateur Hour," hands a gold trophy to 8-year-old Gladys Knight in New York, July 1, 1952, after Knight was voted winner of three nationwide broadcasts of the TV talent show. Kultur Video released a two-DVD set in 2005, titled "The Original Amateur Hour," featuring clips of now-famous entertainers like Knight who got their starts on the show. (The Associated Press)

1945: Lena Baker is executed by the state of Georgia, becoming the first woman executed in the state.

1946: Two Black couples in Walton County — Dorothy Dorsey Malcom and Roger Malcom and George Dorsey and Mae Murray Dorsey — are lynched in a secluded area known as Moore’s Ford after one of them was accused of stabbing a white man.

1947: Busy Bee Cafe and Paschal’s Restaurant open, becoming enduring Black institutions.

1948: Atlanta hires its first Black police officers; Clarence Thomas is born.

When Atlanta's first Black police officers were hired in 1948, they could only work nights and weren't allowed to arrest white people. (Courtesy of city of Atlanta)

1949: WERD-AM begins broadcasting in Atlanta, becoming the first Black-owned radio station in the United States.

The 1950s: Legal challenges and breakthroughs

1950: The NAACP files a federal lawsuit against the Atlanta Board of Education over school inequities.

1951: More than 400 people in Atlanta were poisoned by tainted moonshine, which killed 38 African American men and women and left dozens blind and paralyzed.

1952: Norris Herndon establishes the Herndon Foundation, funding civil rights organizing and bail efforts.

1953: Rufus Clement is elected to the Atlanta Board of Education, becoming the city’s first Black elected official since Reconstruction.

May 19, 1954 (Journal): Black educator Dr. Rufus Clement said that change would come slowly but that, "In the long run, I am sure that segregation in all American life will disappear." (AJC archives)

1954: Brown v. Board of Education overturns school segregation.

1955: Holmes v. City of Atlanta desegregates the city’s public golf courses.

1956: Bobby Grier becomes the first Black athlete to play in the Sugar Bowl, held in Atlanta.

1957: The Southern Christian Leadership Conference is founded in Atlanta by Martin Luther King Jr.

Tyrone Brooks (far left), then a Southern Christian Leadership Conference staffer, talks with an unidentified family outside the SCLC office on Auburn Avenue in this undated photo. The SCLC has roots dating back to the late '50s, when a group of civil rights leaders founded the organization to promote nonviolent action against segregation. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was its first president. (Boyd Lewis/Courtesy of Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center)

1958: The Hebrew Benevolent Congregation (The Temple) is bombed, strengthening Black—Jewish alliances.

1959: Atlanta’s buses and trolleybuses are officially desegregated.

The 1960s: Protest and power

1960: Martin Luther King Jr. and several students were arrested in downtown Atlanta after mass sit-ins at Rich’s Department Store and other lunch counters. King was sentenced to six months of hard labor, but a call from presidential candidate John F. Kennedy to the King family helped secure his release — and won crucial Black support that aided Kennedy’s narrow victory weeks later.

That Lonnie King and a handful of young activists chose March 15, 1960, to launch the Atlanta Student Movement — demonstrations to force area businesses to desegregate —was no accident. Just days before, the group had issued advertisements in newspapers across the city with an essay called an “Appeal for Human Rights.” That and ensuing protests were a pivotal moment in the Civil Rights Movement, with Lonnie King and others joining the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in a national campaign. | PHOTOS: History of Civil Rights Movement

1961: Hamilton Holmes and Charlayne Hunter integrate the University of Georgia, followed eight months later by Georgia Tech; Later, nine Black students desegregate the Atlanta Public Schools.

1962: Construction of “Atlanta’s Berlin Wall” (Peyton Road barrier) deepens residential segregation.

1963: Leroy Johnson is sworn in as the first Black Georgia state senator since 1907.

Leroy R. Johnson, Georgia's first African-American in the state Senate in 92 years, poses on March 26, 1963, at the door of his office in Atlanta. The 34-year-old attorney predicted that the racial fence around the state Democratic Party would fall under the weight of African-American ballots. (The Associated Press)

1964: Martin Luther King Jr. is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. displays his 1964 Nobel Peace Prize medal in Oslo, Norway, December 10, 1964. The 35-year-old Dr. King was honored for promoting the principle of non-violence in the civil rights movement. (The Associated Press)

1965: Grace Towns Hamilton and Julian Bond help usher in the largest Black legislative class in Georgia history.

1966: Georgia lawmakers vote 184—12 not to seat Julian Bond because of his opposition to the Vietnam War.

1967: Lorenzo “Lo” Jelks becomes Atlanta’s first Black television reporter.

WSB-TV 75th Anniversary: Celebrating Lo Jelks

1968: Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated.

1969: Emory University Black Student Alliance protests lead to Black studies programs and faculty hires.

1970s: Politics and punches

1970: Muhammad Ali returns to boxing in Atlanta, defeating Jerry Quarry.