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Menu fp Guide to Athens flagpole.com Home PDF Search The 2020-2021 Flagpole Guide To Athens Back to flagpole.com -- Restaurants Bars/Clubs Breweries Art Around Town Parks and Recreation Specially for Kids Athens Music American Asian Coffee Houses And Bakeries Downhome and BBQ Ice Cream And Smoothies Italian And Pizza Mexican and South American Sandwiches, Burgers And Chicken Something Different Beer Breakfast Buffet Catering Counter Service Curbside Pick Up Delivery Dinner Drive Thru Full Bar Late Night Live Music Lunch Outside Seating Reservations Sunday Brunch Take Out Trivia Vegetarian Friendly Weekend Brunch Wine Checks Credit Cards Cash Only Seven Days Open 24 Hours Wi-Fi Welcome... Athens is a special place: a small town with welcoming people, a big university and many of the amenities of a big city, like vibrant music, arts and food scenes—at least when there’s not a pandemic going on. It hasn’t always been that way, though. Recent elections have brought a renewed interest in issues of equity of social justice. With that in mind, here’s some background through that lens on Athens’ history and the current political landscape. How We Got Here Athens and the University of Georgia have been intertwined from the beginning. The state legislature chartered the University of Georgia in 1785, making UGA the oldest public university in the country, no matter what anyone in North Carolina says. Future governor John Milledge, who bought the university’s initial 633 acres from early settler Daniel Easley in 1801, named the village-to-be for the Greek cradle of philosophy. The county was named for Elijah Clarke, a Revolutionary War hero who later attacked the Creek Indians and became involved in the Yazoo Land Fraud. Ironically, considering Athens now has over 100 bars, the site for UGA was chosen because it was far from any taverns that might distract students. Athens was incorporated in 1806. In the decades that followed, the town became known as the “Manchester of the South,” because of its cotton mills. James Camak led the building of the city’s first railroad, connecting Athens to Augusta in 1841. Other than a minor skirmish, Athens saw no action during the Civil War; but the Cook and Bros. armory across the river from downtown—now housing UGA offices—manufactured rifles for the Confederacy. On a lighter note, local dentist John Gilleland devised a double-barreled cannon that failed spectacularly when tested. The chain connecting the balls snapped, knocking over a chimney and killing a cow. The cannon is now displayed outside City Hall, facing north. Many prominent rebels—including Confederate Vice President Alexander H. Stephens, former U.S. House Speaker Howell Cobb and his brother, T.R.R. Cobb, whose writings defended slavery—had ties to Athens. Plantation slave labor funded the construction of many grand antebellum homes, such as T.R.R. Cobb’s, which is now a museum in the Cobbham neighborhood. Slave labor also helped build UGA. The remains of 105 individuals, mostly slaves or former slaves of African descent, were unearthed during a recent construction project at Baldwin Hall. Subsequent research revealed that the university rented slaves from nearby slave owners, and that much of North Campus had been built on top of a cemetery used by African Americans through the 1880s. A memorial was erected at Baldwin Hall in 2018 honoring those who were buried there. In 1872, Howell Cobb’s sister, Laura Cobb Rutherford, spearheaded the construction of an obelisk honoring the Confederate dead, now located in the median on Broad Street downtown. Her daughter, Mildred Rutherford, was a prominent educator and advocate of the discredited “Lost Cause.” In addition, Howell Cobb’s speeches attacking black citizens’ newly won right to vote helped inspire the formation of the Ku Klux Klan in Georgia. In June 2020, city officials announced plans to move the monument to a location near the aforementioned Barber Creek skirmish. By the turn of the century, Athens had public schools, a police force and its first streetcar suburbs, Cobbham, Boulevard and Five Points. In 1891, the State Normal School, a teacher’s college, opened in what’s now called Normaltown. The Navy took over the college in the 1950s, training its Supply Corps there. When the Navy school moved to Rhode Island in 2011, UGA acquired the property and turned it into a health sciences campus. In the early 20th Century, Black-owned businesses were flourishing on the Hot Corner at Hull and Washington streets, centered around the Morton Theatre, built by wealthy developer Monroe “Pink” Morton, the son of a former slave. But race relations remained tense. Hamilton Holmes and Charlayne Hunter integrated UGA in 1961, sparking near-riots. In 1964, Athens Klansmen murdered Lemuel Penn, a Black Army Reserve officer, who was passing through town late at night. Marches and sit-ins were held at the popular fast-food restaurant The Varsity. Local public schools didn’t fully integrate until 1970, 16 years after Brown v. Board of Education. There was also Urban Renewal, which demolished Black neighborhoods, and Model Cities—which brought a health clinic, better housing and more improvements to African-American areas. Downtown largely emptied out when Georgia Square Mall opened on Atlanta Highway in 1981, which paved the way for Athens to become the music mecca it is today. R.E.M. was about to hit it big, and entrepreneurs took advantage of the vacancies to open venues like the 40 Watt Club. Clarke County and the City of Athens, after two previous failed attempts, merged in 1990, and the newly unified Athens-Clarke County elected Gwen O’Looney as its first female and first progressive mayor. Today, the mall is struggling, while downtown has become in some ways a victim of its own success. The proliferation of luxury apartment complexes has brought rising rents and more chains, increasingly catering to (mostly white) students and pushing locally owned businesses out into the Five Points, Normaltown and Chase Park areas. Historically Black neighborhoods like East Athens and the Hancock Corridor that have suffered for decades from lack of investment are now ripe for gentrification. These issues and more galvanized voters in 2018. They swept five new, more liberal commissioners into office and chose another progressive, Kelly Girtz, as mayor in a landslide. Spurred on even further by massive protests after Minneapolis police killed George Floyd in May 2020, the new group is now tackling issues like affordable housing and criminal justice reform. How to Get Involved Flagpole' s City Dope column is a great resource for keeping up with local politics and government. The ACC Commission includes 10 members, each representing a district, and the mayor, who is elected countywide and presides over meetings but only votes in case of a tie. It meets at least three times a month: Work sessions, where staff give presentations on upcoming decisions, are at 5:30 p.m. on the second Tuesday. Agenda-setting meetings, which include further discussion as well as public input, are at 6 p.m. on the third Tuesday. Voting meetings are at 6 p.m. on the first Tuesday of the following month. When not held remotely, all three are at City Hall (301 College Ave.) and televised on Channel 180 on Charter cable and streamed at youtube.com/accgov . Agendas, background information and contact information for county officials are available at accgov.com . The Clarke County Board of Education, composed of nine members who elect a president from among themselves, meets in the H.T. Edwards Building (440 Dearing Extension) on the first and second Thursdays of the month at 6 p.m. In January 2021 the district plans to move its headquarters to the Piedmont College campus on Prince Avenue. The 14,000-student district has gone through some turmoil recently, with the board placing Superintendent Demond Means on leave in December 2019 and replacing him with his chief of s...