Archive Atlanta

The Crackers may sound familiar, but what about the Osceolas, Atlantans, Firecrackers, Windjammers, Deppens, Cubs and Panthers? This week, I’m talking about the parallel worlds of white and Black baseball in Atlanta, all of the club iterations, where these games were played and how local baseball connects to Henry Grady and Coca Cola.
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The 1956 Sugar Bowl was played in New Orleans, LA, pitting the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets against the University of Pittsburgh Panthers. It was the first integrated bowl game in the Deep South. College football reigns supreme in the South, but if you’ve listened to previous episodes about sports, or stadiums, you know that nothing exists in a vacuum. Amateur and professional sports in Atlanta are intricately tied into class, race, boosterism, and the infamous Atlanta Way. This short episode highlights all of those things and more.
 
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For this Halloween, Liz Clappin (Tomb With A View) and I are are talking about Atlanta’s most prestigious funeral home, Spring Hill Mortuary, it’s creator, Hyatt Patterson, but also the history of funeral homes in general, the practice of embalming, the architecture, historic preservation, the transformation of HM Patterson into the modern age and the SCI model and so much more. 
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The “numbers game” is a form of illegal gambling where the bettor attempts to pick three digits to match what will be chosen the next day. In Atlanta, we called it "playing the bug", and it was HUGE in the 1930s. “Writers'', “Pick up men”, “Bankers”, “Bolster” or “runner” and the “Digits Barons” raked in $30K a day in bets between 1937-1938. At one point, twelve syndicates, or banks, operated in the city.
In 1935, kingpin Eddie Guyol was murdered in his driveway. You can read more about the complex case here.
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This weekend is Pride in Atlanta and while I would have loved a new episode, I couldn’t resist sharing one from two years ago this month, where I interviewed Charlie Paine and learned about Atlanta’s LGBTQ history through the lens of the Atlanta Eagle, which in itself tells us the story of Ponce de Leon’s transition from grand residential street to commercial corridor. There were stories about vibrating mattresses, Italian restaurants, punk rock, RuPaul and Red Dog raids.
Shortly after the episode was released in 2020, the Atlanta Eagle closed its doors but it has recently reopened at Ansley Mall. It was also designated as a local landmark by the City of Atlanta and is now protected from demolition by the City’s Historic Preservation Ordinance. It is the first structure In the Deep South protected under a Historic Zoning Protections for LGBTQ+ History!
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This week’s mini episode is all about Antoinette Farnsworth Drew, the little we know about her life, her artwork and the story of her unsolved murder. History is often unkind to women, and at best has simply forgotten their names and achievements. This is especially true for women that don’t reach national fame and/or those that don’t have descendants to carry on their memory. Both of these are true for Antoinette. 
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This month marks FOUR years of podcasting. Not to get too sappy, but this has been the most rewarding experience of my adult life - other than family related stuff, of course - and the people I have met, the places I’ve toured, the stories I’ve heard - they have truly made me a better human being. I sincerely thank you all for the listens, the follows, the emails, the DMs, for sharing it with you family, friends or neighbor and for making my dream come true - the dream that I could make something to connect people with places or people or events that have happened in Atlanta's history. 
This week, I am doing Listener Q&A, Volume 4 and I got some great questions, like: What are the best ways to research a property? What 5 buildings in Atlanta’s history that are demolished would you resurrect? Would you make a documentary or visual counterpart to the podcast?
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This September 22nd marks the 116th anniversary of the Atlanta Race Massacre. If you’re a long time listener, you may remember I covered this in Episode 19. But what you may also remember, is that I called it the 1906 Race Riot. That has been the accepted nomenclature since the event happened in 1906, but today, I want to revisit the story, add more history and detail and share the updated language and why it’s so important. 
To do that, I have a very special guest, Ann Hill Bond. She talks about the Change the Name Campaign, how the massacre reached South Atlanta and East Point, the often overlooked financial impact and the role of Black Press. 
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This week, we’re talking about Mozley Park, a neighborhood in SW Atlanta, bordered by I-20 along the South, MLK Jr Drive on the North, and the Atlanta Beltline on the East. Its place in Atlanta’s history is being the first neighborhood in Atlanta to experience white flight, but today we’re covering so much more - from the Civil War, to Battle Hill, to its namesake, the KKK, domestic terrorism, demographic shift and its famous residents.
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Even after the ability to legally drink, moonshine has always maintained its popularity. In 1951, that would turn deadly. A white Gainesville bootlegger named John “Fat” Hardy supplied a large order to a Black neighborhood for the weekend. What no one knew was that he replaced ethanol with methanol. Within hours, Grady hospital’s emergency room was packed. Thirty eight people died, four blinded and some paralyzed. Over 400 people total were affected.
This week’s mini episode is about that tragedy and how it changed illegal liquor in the city.
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