Archive Atlanta

This week’s mini episode is about bicycle messengers, a topic that came from Atlanta Courier Collective. From the first messenger company in 1894, through the stories of strikes, arrests and speed records. 
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This week I am sharing my interview with Clayton Trutor, author of "Loserville: How Professional Sports Remade Atlanta - And How Atlanta Remade Professional Sports", which is available on February 1st. We talked about why the South lacked professional sports teams, who and what changed that, the origin stories of the Braves, Hawks, Falcons, Flames and Chiefs and the Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium and Omni Complex.
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Ida Elliott was a young working class girl from Bellwood, today the area along Marietta Street, from 8th North Avenues. Mule-drawn trolleys came to the area in 1882, electric streetcars in 1894 and was annexed into Atlanta in 1897. 
In 1896, a sensational news story landed the neighborhood on the front page of the local papers. Since so much of our history is always about the successful, the rich, the prominent, and it’s not often that we know about the lives of the poor, or working class, or just regular everyday people from Atlanta’s past. 
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This week, we’re talking about three people, Dr. Grafton Gardner, Dr. Rosa Monnish and Otis Lee, that performed abortions in Atlanta, from the 1880s through the 1940s. Who they were, where they lived and work and what consequences they paid for their advocacy. 
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Fernbank Forest is a 65-acre, old-growth forest with white oaks, tulip poplars, loblolly pines, American beech, different oaks, hickory and maples, some that are several hundred years old. This week, I'm talking about the land, the family that once owned it and the push to preserve it for future generations.
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This week, we're talking about Grove Park, which with the new Quarry Park and Microsoft headquarters announcement, has been thrusted into the headlines recently. Named for patent-medicine-magnet Edwin Grove, it was platted first as West Atlanta Park, then later Fortified Hills, before being known as Grove's Park. I am covering the earliest school building, churches, community theater and integration issues of the 50s. 
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In 2021, there was a lot of conversation about establishing high speed rail between Savannah and Atlanta, and, like everything else in Atlanta’s history, we’ve tried it before! The first time, 129 years ago and then again 74 years ago. So this week, we’re talking about the Nancy Hanks train (the original and II). 
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This week, we’re replaying an episode from the archives - covering Atlanta’s history with the bicycle; its riders, causes, promoters, races, and venues. In the first 50 years of the city's cycling history, riders establish numerous clubs, started a lantern parade tradition, fought for paved roads and closing streets to vehicle traffic and created the first dedicated bike path...and that's just the tip of the history iceberg.
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In today’s world, we all know what Uber and Lyft is and what they provide, and many cities with highly established and regulated taxi systems have waged constant war against them - I am definitely thinking of NYC. But did you know that these cities had the same issues, just many decades before you were born? A jitney is the name of a taxi that operated outside of municipal regulations, the word stemming from the slang word for nickel, which is what the ride originally cost.
Atlanta's jitneys only operated legally for 4 years in the firsts half of the 1920s, while waiting for the determination of a court case that would decide their fate. 
 
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Katherine Geffcken was born in "the old Piedmont Hospital" in 1927 and lived on Myrtle and West Peachtree Streets, worshipped at All Saints Episcopal and attended Spring Street School, O'Keefe and Girl's High. She then went on to Agnes Scott, graduating in 1949, graduate school at Bryn Mawr and 30 years as a professor at Wellesley College.
Hearing her stories of "old" Atlanta, riding the streetcar, the Great Depression, WWII, downtown Decatur and generally being a woman doing incredible things, in a time when few women did, brought so much richness to my existing knowledge of Atlanta history and I hope it does the same for listeners!
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