Sacred Places: A Guide to the Civil Rights Sites in Atlanta, Georgia
Harry G. Lefever and Michael C. Page

Foreword by Congressman John Lewis

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 specific street. Tour 4 identifies and describes The Bridge, a sculpture honoring Congressman John Lewis; the Pickrick Restaurant, where Lester Maddox made his defiant last stand against desegregation; the “Atlanta Wall,” where Atlanta Mayor Ivan Allen, Jr., approved the erection of two wooden and steel barricades in the southwest Atlanta neighborhood of Peyton Forest in order to prevent integration; and the grave site of Ruby Doris Smith Robinson, the Spelman College student most active in the 1960s civil rights struggle and the only woman to ever be elected executive secretary of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

The book also contains historic and current photographs of most of the sites and provides information about how to reach the sites by car or public transportation. 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. In addition, a description, photograph, and map of the new Andrew Young Memorial in downtown Atlanta are provided in the Epilogue.

Harry G. Lefever is professor emeritus of Sociology at Spelman College in Atlanta. Prior to coming to Spelman, he taught for three years at Eastern Mennonite College in Harrisonburg, Virginia. He has published two books, Turtle Bogue: Afro-Caribbean Life and Culture in a Costa Rican Village (1992) and Undaunted by the Fight: Spelman College and the Civil Rights Movement, 1957-1967 (2005). He also has published numerous articles in the Anthropology and Humanism Quarterly, Sociological Analysis, Atlanta Historical Journal, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Labor History, and the South Eastern Latin Americanist. Lefever, the father of four children, lives in Atlanta.

Michael C. Page is the geospatial librarian for the Robert W. Woodruff Library at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia,and serves as adjunct faculty in the department of Environmental Studies. He has B.A. and M.A.degrees in Geography from Georgia State University. Page is an Atlanta native.

November 2008 224 pages, 5X8 978-0-88146-121-3. P379 $18.00, Paper Illustrations (color), index, bibliography.

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