Research

The Lost Friends Database compiles ads from the Southwestern Christian Advocate newspaper, where African Americans searched for family members separated by the domestic slave trade. Including ads referencing Atlanta, this database highlights the city’s role in this period. These ads provide a poignant glimpse into personal stories of separation and efforts to reconnect families.

With funds from the Digital Library of Georgia, Atlanta History Center has digitized 213 more recordings from the John Burrison Georgia Folklore Collection. Read more about what’s in some of these fascinating interviews.

Atlanta History Center Archives have been awarded a $137,554 Archival Projects Grant from NHPRC to rehouse, arrange, and create publicly accessible finding aids for archival collections that document populations and land use in and around Atlanta. The collections are, the Atlanta Department of City Planning, Atlanta Urban Design Commission, and Atlanta Real Estate Board appraisals. These collections are important to understanding the impacts of segregation and redlining on Black Atlantans especially, and will fill several gaps in historic property research.

Through its collections, the Atlanta History Center documents historical events that have shaped the Atlanta region.

Atlanta History Center is the repository of millions of pages of archival documents and photographs, and tens of thousands of books, maps, museum artifacts, oral history interviews, and much more, with the collection growing daily. For the first time in the institution’s nearly 100-year history, we are excited to announce that this process will now operate from a new search tool housed on our website.

Though the story of the Atlanta Crackers is well-known, for years, the story of the Atlanta Black Crackers was largely untold.

Take a closer look at the remarkable gems of the Cherokee Garden Library.

Atlanta’s history of influential and entrepreneurial women includes Adelle Bartlett Harper, the first woman to own and operate a florist shop in Atlanta in 1921.

Our museum collections preserve and tell the stories of all of Atlanta and the region.

Atlanta’s urban development, and political and social history are well documented through thousands of photographs from photojournalists and corporate photographers, primarily dated 1930-1990.

African American history in Atlanta is documented in the Kenan Research Center’s strong collections of civic and political leaders, photojournalists, and oral history resources.

Kenan Research Center’s military history collections document the Civil War, World War I, and World War II; as well as an oral history collection featuring over 600 interviews with veterans of foreign wars, including World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam, and the Gulf Wars.

Kenan Research Center collects institutional records and personal papers that document Atlanta’s political and civic history.