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Atlanta’s Civil Rights Legacy

The Herndon Home Museum

If you didn’t know better, arriving at the Herndon Home Museum, you’d think that it was just another chance to look at the palatial setting once enjoyed by the historic Southern upper class. Unlike many mansions you’ll find around Georgia, however, this is the state’s greatest rags-to-riches story.

Alonzo Herndon, the original owner, after whom the home is named, made his way out of slavery, into business and on to become Atlanta’s first African-American millionaire after founding the Atlanta Life Insurance Company.

The Herndon Home Museum was built early in his business career, with Herndon acting as his own contractor and employing exclusively local African-American craftsmen to create an interior that wouldn’t look out of place in Baroque France. As docents explain during guided tours, the home features a unique composite of styles, from Renaissance Revival to Georgian Revival to Rococo, that has landed it a spot on the National Historic Landmarks registry.

Public tours are available only twice a week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but groups can reserve tours any other weekday during regular business hours. The museum accepts private reservations only for groups of 15 or more, with one docent per 15 to 20 visitors.

www.theherndonhome.org

 

Clark Atlanta University Galleries

As one of Atlanta’s — and the country’s — most pre-eminent African-American colleges, Clark Atlanta University has educated, influenced or otherwise touched many of the key figures in the civil rights movement, and its art collection is one of the best places to see that heritage today.

Most of the collection dates to between 1942 and 1970, when one of Georgia’s first college art professors made a name for the galleries by hosting national exhibitions for African-American artists from around the country, who could not show their work in other institutions because of segregation.

But although much of the collection dates to the height of the civil rights movement, Clark Atlanta University’s African-American art collections strive to tell the greater story of African-American artistic expression from the earliest immigrants to the present day.

Modern African-American art exhibits, such as the recent “In the Returnal” collaboration between visual art, dance and music commissioned as part of the National Black Arts Festival, focus on underlying concepts of ancestral identity that continue to be exhibited in even the most avant-garde contemporary African-American art.

www.cau.edu/academics_art_galleries.aspx

 

Researching your trip:

 www.exploregeorgia.org/ATLANTAMETRO

Gabi Logan

Gabi Logan is a freelance travel journalist whose work has also appeared in USA TODAY, The Dallas Morning News and Italy Magazine. As she travels more than 100,000 miles each year, she aims to discover the unexpected wonder in every destination.