digATL | The Digital Atlanta Portal

Digital tour of the rise and fall of the bawdy brothels that lined Downtown Atlanta’s Collins Street from the late 1800s to the early 1900s—showcasing tantalizing tidbits from newspapers, census records, city directories, property records, maps, and more from Georgia State University Library’s digital resources. Walk the streets (well, not like that!) and transport your imagination back to those bygone days when sin and Southern hospitality went hand in hand.

Date Created
Spring 2022

Related Content

• Interview on Archive Atlanta Podcast
• Presentation with Allyson Stephens at 2022 Atlanta Studies Symposium — “Sin in a Southern City: The Unearthed History of Atlanta’s Postbellum-to-Progressive Era Prostitution Trade” 

Leading up to and after the Women’s March of 2017, Georgia activists, Lucy Hargrett Draper, and her niece, Chrisy Erickson Strum documented emerging and ongoing activism through what they are calling their U.S. Women’s Protest “Reckoning” collection, which includes events and activities occurring in Atlanta. What they have given Georgia State University is a remarkably rich resource that will continue to grow as movements and campaigns evolve. The collection serves as a companion to oral histories, photographs, textiles and artifacts that have been donated by March participants since 2017. This online exhibit highlights some of the themes from the “Reckoning” collection.

Founded in 1913, Georgia State University grew as it supported the educational needs of Atlanta and the state of Georgia. Originally an evening program intended for the Atlanta business community, the school achieved university status in 1969. With this new phase of academic growth, the administration focused on expanding the University Library’s ability to support advanced research. The Library’s Special Collections and Archives launched formally in 1971, with the mission of collecting rare and unique primary source material to support teaching and scholarship. Our first collections directly engaged the research needs of our faculty and students focusing on the people, communities, and events that shaped modern-day Atlanta, Georgia, and the New South. This focus on documenting the sometimes contentious, too often racist and sexist, but always fascinating story of modern-day Atlanta has led us to seek out and preserve the stories of everyday people. The stories maintained in our archives are not just of the powerful and famous, they are the stories of everyday people who recognized injustice and organized their peers, family, coworkers, and lives around rectifying that injustice and making Atlanta a more equitable city. Fifty years ago, our collections started with one box and a single collecting focus on southern labor unions. As our collecting areas have grown from one to nine, so has the department. Today our collecting areas — Southern Labor, Photographs, Women’s, Gender & Sexuality, Music & Radio Broadcasting, Social Change, Rare Books, Pulp Literature, and University Archives — consist of 8 miles of materials and several terabytes of digital content. Georgia State’s Special Collections & Archives gives researchers an in-depth view of life in 20th and 21st Century Atlanta and the Greater Southeast Region. This expansion of collecting has been possible only through creating connections to passionately engaged community partners. From the LGBTQ Institute and We Love BuHi to the Atlanta Journal Constitution and the AFL-CIO, Special Collections builds relationships with communities all over Atlanta and the South. The collections entrusted to us document the stories, accomplishments, and struggles of those communities. Bridging Communities introduces a few stories found in our collections, such as the women who organized domestic workers for basic work protections; a woman who recognized a need to support families of incarcerated mothers; a sanitation workers’ strike protesting continued discrimination in hiring and promotions, poor working conditions, and low pay; women fighting for equal rights; the University’s struggle with racial tensions on campus; a grassroots campaign to retain the musical director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra; and organizations working to assist the homeless and other marginalized groups. This exhibit is a testament to the important role archives play within the communities they serve.

In commemoration of the 120th anniversary of the founding of the Grady Memorial Hospital School of Nursing. The Grady Memorial Hospital School of Nursing, chartered in 1898, was the first nursing school in Georgia and served as a cornerstone to the education and training of nurses in the region and across the United States. In 1917 the Municipal Training School for Colored Nurses at Grady was chartered, providing nursing education to black nursing students. These two programs were integrated in September 1964. During its tenure of 84 years, the School trained over 4,000 nurses as it grew and developed along with the field of nursing education.
Keywords: exhibits, collections, healthcare, higher education

The Lucy Hargrett Draper Collections on Women’s Rights, Advocacy and the Law document state and national efforts to achieve equality for women. They include the Lucy Hargrett Draper U.S. Equal Rights Amendment (1921-1982) Research Collection, the Lucy Hargrett Draper Papers on Feminist Activism in U.S. Politics, the Lucy Hargrett Draper Papers on the Creation of Women’s Archives, the Lucy Hargrett Draper Papers on the Second U.S. Women’s Movement (1963-1982), the Lucy Hargrett Draper Papers on Institutional Reforms for Women and the U.S. Military, 1970-1984, the Lucy Hargrett Draper Artifact Collection, and the Lucy Hargrett Draper Personal Papers.