Living Atlanta An Oral History of the City, 1914-1948 [Paperback]

Clifford M. Kuhn (Author)
CLIFFORD M. KUHN was an associate professor of history at Georgia State University and director of the Georgia Government Documentation Project. He is also author of Contesting the New South Order.

Harlon E. Joye (Author)
HARLON E. JOYE is a sociologist and executive producer of the Living Atlanta radio series on which this book is based.

E. Bernard West (Author)
E. BERNARD WEST, an historian, is researching a book on the Buffalo Soldiers.

From the memories of everyday experience, Living Atlanta vividly recreates life in the city during the three decades from World War I through World War II—a period in which a small, regional capital became a center of industry, education, finance, commerce, and travel. This profusely illustrated volume draws on nearly two hundred interviews with Atlanta residents who recall, in their own words, "the way it was"—from segregated streetcars to college fraternity parties, from moonshine peddling to visiting performances by the Metropolitan Opera, from the growth of neighborhoods to religious revivals.

The book is based on a celebrated public radio series that was broadcast in 1979-80 and hailed by Studs Terkel as "an important, exciting project—a truly human portrait of a city of people." Living Atlanta presents a diverse array of voices—domestics and businessmen, teachers and factory workers, doctors and ballplayers. There are memories of the city when it wasn't quite a city: "Back in those young days it was country in Atlanta," musician Rosa Lee Carson reflects. "It sure was. Why, you could even raise a cow out there in your yard." There are eyewitness accounts of such major events as the Great Fire of 1917: "ló-