Today, Capital B is launching its biggest project ever. For the Record: A Black Oral History Archive is a collection of over 100 firsthand stories from Black Americans across regions, generations, and identities. Since last year, our reporters and partners have been gathering recollections from Black people that paint a vivid picture of resistance, resilience, […]
History
Posted inArts & Entertainment, History
Atlanta Artist Nellie Mae Rowe Gets Her Due in Acclaimed New Film
Through abstract shapes and bold colors, the horrors of racism and segregation of Jim Crow America came to life in Nellie Mae Rowe’s brushstrokes. Now, an upcoming documentary is tracing the life of the groundbreaking, self-taught artist. AfroPoP: The Ultimate Cultural Exchange, Black Public Media’s Peabody Award-winning series, is featuring Rowe in This World is […]
Posted inCriminal Justice, History
Palmetto Massacre: Black Men Arrested at Sundown, Lynched by Midnight
Palmetto, Georgia, was, by all accounts, a quiet and growing town in the final years of the 19th century. Located 25 miles southwest of Atlanta, it had a cotton mill, two warehouses, a hotel, churches, and slow, steady commerce. Its Black residents were part of the working and worshipping community that white newspapers would later […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment, Community, Culture, Events, History
Women’s History Month: 12 Events in Atlanta Honoring Black Women
As the home of civil rights legends, business leaders, and cultural content creators, Atlanta — and Black women in our city — influence everything. In celebration of Women’s History Month this March, there will be book signings, art exhibits, and spoken-word brunches so that Black women in the metro area can get their flowers. March […]
Posted inCulture, History
Political Power and Black Business: A Sweet Auburn Building Anchored Black Atlanta
Built in 1895, the brown and yellow Queen Anne style house sits close to the sidewalk, two stories rising straight from a narrow yard bordered by hedges trimmed even with the porch rail. The steps leading from the street are paved with concrete worn at the center where thousands of feet have walked the same […]
Posted inHistory, News
Georgia Leaders Mourn Passing of Civil Rights Icon Jesse Jackson
Atlanta remembers the charismatic speaker who played a major role in national politics and in our own city.
Posted inCulture, History
From Enslavement to Legacy: The History Buried at South-View Cemetery
On the southern edge of Atlanta, red clay settles into quiet hills, and magnolia trees stretch toward the sun. South-View Cemetery rests like a long, unfinished sentence. Not silent, nor asleep. It listens. It remembers. Beneath its grass and stone lies a community that refused to disappear. Here, the dead become the storytellers about the […]
Posted inCommunity, History
Keeping Watch: The Night Black People Claimed Freedom
Before the clocks struck midnight, before freedom found its way into law books, Black folks were already awakened. Awakened in the hush of pine-shadowed churches, awakened in praise houses leaning toward the marsh, awakened between damp blankets, awakened in cabins where whispered prayers traveled faster than fear. On the night of Dec. 31, 1862, African […]
Posted inEssay, History
From Summerhill to Auburn Avenue, the Church That Would Not Fall
Sunday is when paradise is preached and seen. They come dressed in their Sunday best. Starched collars and scuffed shoes. Wide-brimmed hats blooming like flowers across the sanctuary. An elder humming low, as if tuning her soul like a string before the choir rose. The beauty of the stained glass fell across the pews like […]
Posted inCriminal Justice, History
The 1906 Atlanta Race Massacre Stole Black Lives Where Downtown Condos Now Stand
I hold your stories. I am Georgia’s red clay and black land. The silence that speaks beneath the roar of trains and traffic. I am a record. You call me soil, but I am memory. I remember how Black life rose after slavery’s end. How men and women carved businesses into my streets, lifted schools […]