In the spirit of Mayor Allen’s abiding love for Atlanta, we offer the podcast “Building Memories” as a venue for telling stories about iconic places of Atlanta and the people who have occupied them. With the ever-changing cityscape of Atlanta, our commitment is to document the people and places whose stories should not be lost from public memory amidst Atlanta’s continual drive for redevelopment. The mission of “Building Memories” is to preserve and share community stories from Atlanta’s past in order to remember a more diversely rendered citizenry, those – famous and not so famous – who, like Ivan Allen, Jr., helped lay the foundation for what Atlanta is today.
The podcast is organized around thematic threads and is prepared by teams of faculty, students, and community members.
Topics of current and future podcasts:
- Herndon Home
- Herren’s Restaurant and The Balzer Theater
- Auburn Avenue Research Library
- Atlanta Daily World
- Friendship Baptist Church
- Fountain Hall – Morris Brown College
- Carrie Steele-Pitts Home
- Phyllis Wheatley YWCA
- Booker T Washington High
- McClendon Hospital
- Southview Cemetery
- The Royal Peacock
- Paschal’s Restaurant
- Prince Hall
Initial work on Building Memories (through mid-Fall 2017) focused on developing the theme and processes for the podcast; this phase was primarily the work of faculty and other professionals.
In late Fall 2017, the team identified three student interns who will learn the art of podcasting: writing, interviewing, and producing the content. The goal for Spring 2017 is for our student crew to gain sufficient skill in these techniques to produce the final episode of the semester on their own. Tentatively, the subject of this episode will be Friendship Baptist Church, Atlanta's first autonomous black Baptist congregation; founded in 1862, the church has played a significant role in the founding of institutions of higher education and has been at the center of African American political power in Atlanta for many decades.