The mission of Atlanta History Center includes advancing a greater understanding of our collective history using multiple viewpoints, undertold stories, and the evidence-based record of difficult history.
By offering this broad perspective, Atlanta History Center encourages greater awareness of our past and through that to our current lives and future together.
History, when explored accurately from multiple perspectives, can potentially serve as a call-to-action and inspire individuals to address challenges and opportunities facing our community and our future together.
This meaning is not without interest to you, Gentle Reader; for the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line.
In Atlanta, the roots of racial discrimination and inequality run deep. Historically, many Black Atlantans were not registered to vote, received poor education, lived in substandard housing, had access to menial jobs with little access to health care, and suffered under the strains of legal repression and physical violence.
Despite being promoted as “The City Too Busy to Hate” and serving as the home of the Civil Rights Movement, in many ways Atlanta remains a city separated by race.
Within a struggle between obstruction and unflinching determination, Atlanta’s history as a bastion for progress in the South is made greater against the backdrop of the battle waged to get there and hold the line.