Sacred Places

This is the essential guide to the Civil Rights Movement in Atlanta. The book is organized around four walking and driving tours of the important civil rights sites in Atlanta from the 1940s to the present. The first three tours - Auburn Avenue, Atlanta University Center and Surrounding Neighborhood, and Martin Luther King Jr. Drive - provide information about sites located within a single neighborhood or that lie along a street. Tour 4 identifies and describes The Bridge (a sculpture honoring Congressman John Lewis); the Pickrick Restaurant; the 'Atlanta Wall', where Atlanta Mayor Ivan Allen, Jr., approved the erection of two wooden and steel barricades in southwest Atlanta in order to prevent integration; and, the gravesite of Ruby Doris Smith Robinson, the Spelman student most active in the 1960s civil rights struggle. The book also contains historic and current photographs of the sites as well as directions to the sites. Furthermore, the book provides a brief history of the civil rights movement in Atlanta in the 1950s and 1960s, a chronology of the important civil rights events in Atlanta from 1957 to 1968, and a bibliography of books and articles published about civil rights events in Atlanta during the 1950s and 1960s.