Urban Renewal

When driving down a busy street in Atlanta, you may find yourself on a different road without making a turn. These seemingly nonsensical street name changes are due to past residential segregation practices enacted when white Atlantans did not want to share the same address as Blacks.

In 1962, Mayor Ivan Allen, Jr. ordered the construction of a barricade served to sever the main line connecting the white and Black sections of the Cascade Heights neighborhood.

For more than fifty years, Ethel Mae Matthews worked tirelessly for greater welfare rights for Atlanta’s poor and disabled.

A group of children prepare for a pickup game of basketball in the Bedford Pine neighborhood in January 1971.

In 1925, the Chamber of Commerce launched Forward Atlanta, a campaign to attract business to the city. Over 750 companies moved to Atlanta, infusing $34 million in payroll into the city’s economy.

Atlanta architect and developer John Portman transformed the downtown Atlanta skyline and contributed to the revitalization of the inner city beginning with construction of the Merchandise Mart in 1961.

Learning Objectives of Atlanta History Center’s exhibition: Atlanta ’96. Shaping an Olympic and Paralympic City.