This is a guidebook to South-View Cemetery in Atlanta, Georgia. The cemetery was chartered 21 April 1886 by African-American businessmen, all former slaves, faced with exhaustion of Oakland Cemetery (1850) and desirous of a respectful burial ground. The Watts family has managed the cemetery from its earliest days; the current president is the great-granddaughter of the patriarch, Albert Watts. Notable burials include the parents and grandparents of Martin Luther King, Jr.; John Wesley Dobbs, the ""Mayor of Sweet Auburn""; and Alonzo Franklin Herndon, who was born a slave, worked as a sharecropper, established a chain of opulent and successful barbershops, then became Atlanta's first black millionaire through the Atlanta Life Insurance Company. Through the lives and accomplishments in death-year order of over 100 people buried at South-View, this book tells the history of African-American Atlanta. Introductory essays are by Traci Rylands and Herman ""Skip"" Mason, Jr.

In 1884, several leading citizens purchased 577 acres to open Atlanta's Westview Cemetery. The rolling terrain, part of which was a site in the Civil War battle of Ezra Church, became the final resting place for more than 100,000 people. Prominent locals buried here include Grant Park namesake L.P. Grant, author Joel Chandler Harris, High Museum benefactor Harriet High, Coca-Cola founder Asa Candler Sr. and Havertys founder J.J. Haverty. The cemetery's Westview Abbey mausoleum is one of the nation's largest, with more than eleven thousand crypts. Throughout its history, Westview dabbled in other business ventures, including a cafeteria, a funeral home and an ambulance service. And for decades, the cemetery's Westview Floral Company sold flowers to lot owners and local businesses, leading to its own advice column in the Atlanta Constitution. Author Jeff Clemmons traces the complete history of this treasured necropolis.

The story of Atlanta's South-View Cemetery begins in 1886 when African Americans challenged the city's segregated burial practices by forming the South-View Cemetery Association. For years, African Americans had objected to the conditions they were forced to endure in Atlanta's racially segregated cemeteries. South-View's founders were determined to provide a place where African Americans could be buried with dignity.Historic cemeteries like South-View are microcosms of society, and the lives and deaths of the people buried in South-View reflect the social history of Atlanta. The monuments and grave markers in the oldest part of the cemetery reflect the influence of Victorian funerary art as well as African American vernacular memorial traditions. A variety of gravestone materials, from elaborate monuments of marble and granite to simple markers of concrete and brick, memorialize African Americans from all social strata. South-View's historic landscape includes the burial sites of many prominent African Americans who founded and developed Atlanta's historic churches, businesses, and colleges. A few of South-View's most notable burials include Alonzo Herndon, founder of Atlanta Life Insurance Company; Rev. & Mrs. Martin Luther King, Sr., religious and civil rights leaders; Bishop Henry McNeal Turner, African Methodist Episcopal Church organizer; and Julian Bond, social activist, scholar, and civil rights leader.

Through engaging narrative, rich photography, archival images and detailed maps, a versatile guide to Atlanta's oldest public cemetery is a great way to tour the cemetery's landscape of remembrance, as well as a unique way to explore Atlanta's history. Original.

Perfect for budding cemetery armchair travelers and serious taphophiles, this hauntingly beautiful guide to the world's most interesting and unusual cemeteries has been revised and updated to include 23 additional locations. Every year, millions of tourists flock to cemeteries around the globe to uncover hidden stories of their residents and admire the incredible architecture, stunning landscapes, and even wildlife in these open-air museums. In this lavishly photographic bucket list of the world’s most interesting cemeteries, author Loren Rhoads, who hosts the popular Cemetery Travel blog, details the history, eye-catching monuments, and other fascinating finds that make each destination unique. Entries include unforgettable cemeteries such as the Mount Koya cemetery in Japan, where 10,000 lanterns illuminate the forest setting; Savannah's Bonaventure Cemetery which hosts gorgeous night tours of the Southern Gothic tombstones under moss-covered trees; and Il Cimitero Acattolico in Rome that is the final resting place of young poets John Keats and Percy Shelley. Whether you are a true taphophile (cemetery enthusiast) who seeks out obscure locations or a tourist who likes to incorporate not-to-be-missed cemeteries like Paris's Pere Lachaise and Arlington National Cemetery into your itinerary, 222 Cemeteries to See Before You Die is both a useful trip-planning tool and a browser's delight.

After Reconstruction, against considerable odds, African Americans in Atlanta went about such self-interested pursuits as finding work and housing. They also built community, says Allison Dorsey. To Build Our Lives Together chronicles the emergence of the network of churches, fraternal organizations, and social clubs through which black Atlantans pursued the goals of adequate schooling, more influence in local politics, and greater access to municipal services. Underpinning these efforts were the notions of racial solidarity and uplift. Yet as Atlanta's black population grew--from two thousand in 1860 to forty thousand at the turn of the century--its community had to struggle not only with the dangers and caprices of white laws and customs but also with internal divisions of status and class. Among other topics, Dorsey discusses the boomtown atmosphere of post-Civil War Atlanta that lent itself so well to black community formation; the diversity of black church life in the city; the role of Atlanta's black colleges in facilitating economic prosperity and upward mobility; and the ways that white political retrenchment across Georgia played itself out in Atlanta. Throughout, Dorsey shows how black Atlantans adapted the cultures, traditions, and survival mechanisms of slavery to the new circumstances of freedom. Although white public opinion endorsed racial uplift, whites inevitably resented black Atlantans who achieved some measure of success. The Atlanta race riot of 1906, which marks the end of this study, was no aberration, Dorsey argues, but the inevitable outcome of years of accumulated white apprehensions about black strivings for social equality and economic success. Denied the benefits of full citizenship, the black elite refocused on building an Atlanta of their own within a sphere of racial exclusion that would remain in force for much of the twentieth century.