Atlanta, the birthplace of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., is also known as the birthplace of the civil rights movement. The home of Margaret Mitchell, the author of Gone With The Wind, Atlanta has a rich and interesting history for such a young city.

150 years ago, the area that is now Atlanta belonged to the Creek and Cherokee nations. Atlanta was originally known as Terminus. The settlement known as Terminus began when the stake known as the “zero milepost” for the Western & Atlantic Railroad was driven into the ground in 1837 near what is now Underground Atlanta. According to a chief engineer for the W&A Railroad, “Terminus will be a good location for one tavern, a blacksmith shop, a grocery store, and nothing else.” In 1842 the Terminus settlement of 6 buildings and 30 people got a name change to “Marthasville” (after the daughter of Governor Wilson Lumpkin). The name “Atlanta” was suggested to replace Marthasville in 1845. Atlanta, short for Atlantica-Pacifica, became the official name for the area and Atlanta was incorporated as a city in 1847. Atlanta is the only city in North America to be burned as an act of war. Just 400 buildings remained after General Sherman torched the city in 1864. In 1885, after Fulton county barred liquor, pharmacist John Pemberton, fearing the prohibition would hurt sales of his French Wine Cola, created a new “headache remedy” he called Coca-Cola.

Atlanta University professor W.E.B. DuBois began leading conferences on the living conditions of urban African Americans in 1896. He later became a founder of the NAACP. Rev. Martin Luther King Sr., pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, lead a voter registration march to City Hall in 1834. John Wesley Dobbs organized the Atlanta Civil and Political League to encourage African American involvement in politics that same year. In 1946, after the US Supreme Court ruling in Chapman v King, the Georgia all-white primary is deemed unconstitutional. After years of struggling against the whites-only primary election, a massive two-month voter drive increases the number of registered African American voters from below 7,000 to over 24,000. In January 1957, 60 African Americans from 10 states attended an integration strategy meeting in Atlanta. This group eventually evolved into the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. That same year, 9 years after the first African Americans were allowed on the police force, female police officers are hired.