1906 Atlanta Race Massacre
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120th Year Since 1906The First Annual 1906Remembrance Exposition WeekSeptember 20-26, 2026→Were you there?Take the Exposition Week Survey→

The Coalition to Remember

The 1906
Atlanta
Race Massacre

For four days in September 1906, white mobs attacked Black Atlantans across the city. At least twenty-five people were killed.

Whitehall and Marietta Streets, Atlanta, 1905. Streetcars, carriages and crowds.

Marietta Street,
one year before.

Library of Congress · 1905

This was the busiest corner in Atlanta. The city's streetcar lines all met a block from here, and Black Atlantans rode them every day. Much of the city around them had been built by Black labor, and little of its wealth had reached them. On the evening of September 22 the mob attacked those passengers first, and before the night ended it had left the bodies of three victims at the base of the Henry Grady statue on this street. By the end of the four days, at least twenty-two more people had been killed elsewhere in the city.

Library of Congress · 1905

About

In 1895 Atlanta invited the world to the Cotton States Exposition. On its stage a Black educator offered a bargain: work, build, be patient, and safety will follow.

Black Atlanta built. By the turn of the century downtown was a bustling, economically progressive Black district, and when W. E. B. Du Bois went to Paris to show the world what Black America was becoming, he took photographs of its strivers with him.

In September 1906 a white mob answered that prosperity with fire. Over four days neighbors were murdered in Atlanta's streets and Black-owned businesses were burned.

Black Atlanta, betrayed but unbroken, built again.

The Coalition exists to make sure that story is told in full, as a truth to face together rather than a wound to reopen. This is the 120th Year Since 1906, and the beginning of a permanent institution: The First Annual 1906 Remembrance Exposition Week.

Exposition Events

What's On

The Schedule ↓Why an Exposition, Why Now ↓

1906 Atlanta Race Massacre Exposition Campaign · Sunday, September 20 at 10:00 AM to Saturday, September 26 at 2:00 PM · Online

Give to Remember, Give to Restore: Recognizing 120 Years since 1906

This crowdfunding campaign recognizes the 120th year since the 1906 Atlanta Race Massacre. Your gift helps us honor the lives lost, keep the story told in full, and sustain the truth-telling, learning, remembrance, and community action that guide this Exposition.

Give to the campaign

The First Annual 1906 Remembrance Exposition Week

Ambassador Andrew Young, Honorary Exposition Chair

A week of truth-telling, learning, remembrance and community action, guided by this year's theme: Truth, Reconciliation, and Action.

8
venues across the city
3
day Mini-Conference
5
days of the History Exhibit
12
events in all
The First Annual 1906 Remembrance Exposition Week poster: the full schedule of events, September 20 through 26, 2026, under the theme Truth, Reconciliation, and Action. Ambassador Andrew Young, Honorary Exposition Chair.
The Exposition poster, as of September 19. Select it to read it full size.The week on one page (PDF)

Why an Exposition, Why Now

An Exposition creates witnesses.

It claims public space. It announces that a community's story, evidence and vision matter, and that they will be told every year, permanently, in the city where it happened.

The most powerful Black leaders have always known that speaking truth requires a stage, witnesses and permanent structures. It requires declaration, not plea.

  1. 1895

    Booker T. Washington used the Cotton States Exposition in Atlanta to declare economic power.

  2. 1900

    W. E. B. Du Bois came from Atlanta to the Paris Exposition Universelle to demand global recognition.

  3. 1903

    Du Bois wrote The Souls of Black Folk while teaching at Atlanta University, with a chapter on Washington and another on Atlanta.

  4. 1905

    Du Bois, then teaching in Atlanta, helped found the Niagara Movement to organize resistance. It fed into the founding of the NAACP four years later.

  5. 1906

    The response to that progress and that expression. Over four days in September, white mobs attacked Black Atlantans across the city.

  6. 2006

    The centennial recognition — the first time 1906 was publicly commemorated in the hundred years since. Atlanta’s leaders picked up the legacy torch from Washington and Du Bois.

  7. 2026

    Atlanta uses the First Annual 1906 Remembrance Exposition Week to declare: this violence will be named, this leadership will be honored, this lineage will continue. Every year. Permanently. Ambassador Andrew Young carries that leadership torch forward as Honorary Exposition Chair of the First Annual 1906 Remembrance Exposition Week.

Each event Sunday through Tuesday has its own RSVP. The 3-Day Mini-Conference requires registration, which carries a recommended tiered contribution — one amount for all three days, or separate amounts for individual events — with an option to register at no contribution. The Mini-Conference is the documentary screening and town hall on Thursday, A Special Equitable Dinner on Friday, and the workshop and Call to Action on Saturday; space is limited. The History Exhibit runs at the APEX Museum with HBCU student docents.

RSVP for Sunday to TuesdayRegister for the Mini-ConferenceGiveVolunteerBecome a member

The Schedule

Opening the week · Sunday, September 20 · 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM · First Congregational Church

Message by the Reverend Dr. Robert Franklin, former President of ITC and Morehouse College, at the Truth & Reconciliation Worship Service.

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The Massacre

What Happened

Through the summer of 1906, Atlanta's four white daily papers ran repeated false stories alleging assaults by Black men on white women.

The stories were lurid, exaggerated, or invented outright, and each extra edition outsold the last. The night before the massacre, the Atlanta Evening News asked its readers: “Shall these black devils be permitted to assault and almost kill our women, and go unpunished?” Two of those papers live on today as The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. No apology has ever been made.

Atlanta newspaper headlines from September 1906, alleging assaults and calling the city to act.
01 · The invented crime waveThe headlines themselves. On the afternoon of September 22 the papers put out four separate extra editions alleging new assaults. None of them was substantiated, and each edition drew a bigger, angrier crowd into the streets downtown.

By nine that evening, a mob of thousands of white men and boys was attacking Black Atlantans at Five Points.

They pulled people from streetcars, dragged Black workers out of hotels and barbershops, and killed at least twenty-five people over four days. Ten to fifteen thousand were in the streets before heavy rain broke the first night at three in the morning.

Peachtree Street, Atlanta, 1906.
02 · What the mob attackedWhat the mob attacked was Black success. On Peachtree Street, Alonzo Herndon, who was born enslaved, ran the finest barbershop in the South and was building the fortune that became Atlanta Life Insurance. His shop was among the first places destroyed.
A 1906 newspaper's drawing of the saloons along Decatur Street.
03 · The excuseAll summer the papers described Decatur Street's Black-patronized saloons as dens of vice. This drawing of them ran in one of those same newspapers. The violence began here at about nine in the evening, with an attack on a Black bicycle messenger.
The interior of Alonzo Herndon's Crystal Palace barbershop in 1903: marble, mirrors, chandeliers and rows of chairs.
04 · What was thereInside Alonzo Herndon's Crystal Palace on Peachtree Street, 1903. Marble, mirrors and twenty-five chairs, the finest barbershop in the South, owned by a man born enslaved. Around it stood six Black colleges, Black-owned groceries, pharmacies and newspapers, and the neighborhoods of Brownsville and Darktown. This was the Atlanta the mob set out to break. Atlanta History Center

The Path of Terror

The violence began downtown on the night of Saturday, September 22, and reached Brownsville, on the south side of the city, two days later.

The tour follows that route through twelve places, from First Congregational Church to South-View Cemetery. Read it from anywhere, walk it, or ride it in Sunday's car processional. On the route it uses your phone's location to tell you what happened at each place as you reach it.

Take the tour

Brownsville

Brownsville armed itself.

On the massacre's third night, county police and armed white civilians marched into Brownsville, the Black neighborhood around Clark College and Gammon Theological Seminary, expecting to disarm it. The residents fired back. An officer was killed, and the state militia occupied the neighborhood, seized weapons, and arrested more than 250 Black men, including the colleges' professors.

Luther Judson Price, Atlanta's first Black postmaster, in a period portrait with spectacles and a bow tie.
Luther Judson Price was born in 1856, was among Clark College's first graduates, and became Atlanta's first Black postmaster, serving Brownsville from the post office he ran on Gammon Avenue. When the neighborhood defended itself, the county arrested him on charges of supplying his neighbors with weapons. The charges were dropped. He kept his post office, registered Black voters, and lived in Brownsville until his death in 1936. Atlanta Public Schools archive
Title page: Regulations for the Government of the National Guard of Georgia, 1908.
The state answered Black self-defense with occupation and law. The militia that raided Brownsville got its standing rules in this 1908 manual. That same year Georgia amended its constitution with a literacy test and a grandfather clause, and most Black citizens could not vote for the next fifty years. Library of Congress
Walter Francis White, photographed by Clara Sipprell.
Walter White was thirteen in 1906. When the mob came up Houston Street, he sat in the dark of his family's parlor holding a gun, and his father told him: “Son, don't shoot until the first man puts his foot on the lawn, and then—don't you miss.” The mob turned back. In 1909 the movement Du Bois led became the NAACP, and White ran it from 1929 to 1955, going undercover to investigate dozens of lynchings. Photographed by Clara Sipprell

The Death Toll

Those killed were never honestly counted.

10
certificates issued
City coroner
12
in the official history
Franklin Garrett, Atlanta and Environs, 1954
25
known killed
Equal Justice Initiative; Fulton County Remembrance Coalition
40
upper scholarly estimate
New Georgia Encyclopedia
100
in unofficial reports
Fulton County Remembrance Coalition

25 Victims

As far as we know

At least twenty-five people were killed in Atlanta between the 22nd and the 25th of September, 1906.

Sixteen of those killed have been identified by name. Nine have not, and researchers are still working to recover them.

Each name opens what the record holds about that person, and what it leaves out. Marshall Carter and Stinson Ferguson were identified in 2023, one hundred and seventeen years after they were killed.

Studio portrait of W. E. B. Du Bois, photographed by James E. Purdy in 1907.
W. E. B. Du Bois was thirty-eight and teaching at Atlanta University. He was in Alabama when the massacre began; he came back by train and sat on the steps of the dormitory where his wife and daughter lived, holding a shotgun. Within three weeks he had written “A Litany of Atlanta.” Photographed by James E. Purdy, 1907

“Red was the midnight; clang, crack and cry of death and fury filled the air and trembled underneath the stars when church spires pointed silently to Thee.”

“A Litany of Atlanta,” The Independent, 11 October 1906. SubtitledDone at Atlanta, on the Day of Death, 1906.

One of the twenty-five

Frank Smith

Stabbed and pelted with stones, then thrown from the bridge on Forsyth Street.

Occupation
Western Union messenger
Where they died
Forsyth Street bridge
Date
22 September 1906
Buried
South-View Cemetery

What we don't know

  • Where he lived

He is buried at South-View Cemetery, and his headstone still stands there. It reads: Frank Smith, born February 16, 1887, died September 22, 1906. That makes him nineteen. Capital B Atlanta’s account gives his age as eighteen.

His and George Union Wilder’s are the two graves of the twenty-five that can be visited today. For years Wilder’s was described as the only one that was marked.

Sources

  1. Fulton County Remembrance Coalition, “Atlanta Race Massacre of 1906 Narrative”
  2. WABE and the National Center for Civil and Human Rights, “(re)Defining History: Uncovering the 1906 Atlanta Race Massacre,” 2023. Ann Hill Bond visits his grave at South-View
  3. Headstone at South-View Cemetery, photographed by Cynthia Jennings (2019) and K. Danner (2020), Find a Grave memorial 198476290
  4. Capital B Atlanta, “The 1906 massacre stole Black lives where downtown condos now stand,” September 2025

One of the twenty-five

George Union Wilder

He escaped slavery during the Civil War and enlisted in the U.S. Army. He took the middle name Union because of that service. He was found dead in a shed behind Frank Fambro’s store.

Age
70
Where they died
A shed behind Frank Fambro’s store, Brownsville
Date
25 September 1906
Buried
South-View Cemetery

What we don't know

  • Exactly how he died

His headstone stands at South-View Cemetery. For years it was described as the only marked grave of a victim; Frank Smith’s stone stands at South-View too. Wilder’s carries the middle name he adopted because of his service, and a hand-written epitaph:

A soldier of the Civil War, was killed in the riot

The 2006 centennial began here, with a funeral motorcade and a memorial service at this grave.

Sources

  1. Fulton County Remembrance Coalition, “Atlanta Race Massacre of 1906 Narrative”
  2. National Center for Civil and Human Rights, “The Atlanta Race Massacre of 1906: A brief history” (PDF)
  3. U.S. Army pension records of George Union Wilder, 1890–1907, National Archives and Records Administration

One of the twenty-five

Marshall Carter

He suffered a fractured skull and died at Grady Hospital of asphyxia due to inhaled vomit.

Age
13
Occupation
Schoolboy
Where they lived
Love Street, on the edge of Summerhill
Where they died
Grady Hospital
Date
22 September 1906
Buried
South-View Cemetery

Counted in 2023

His original Fulton County Board of Health “return of a death” certificate was located. It carried the word “riot.”

NCCHR Truth and Transformation Initiative, with the Georgia Civil Rights Cold Cases Project and the Afro-American Genealogical Historical Society

What we don't know

  • Who his family were
  • Where exactly he was attacked

Sources

  1. National Center for Civil and Human Rights, “Unearthing the Past: Identifying Victims of the 1906 Atlanta Race Massacre”

One of the twenty-five

Stinson Ferguson

He sustained a gunshot wound to the abdomen and was declared dead on arrival at Grady Hospital.

Age
25
Where they lived
Thurmond Street, northwest Atlanta
Where they died
Grady Hospital
Date
22 September 1906
Buried
South-View Cemetery

Counted in 2023

His original Fulton County Board of Health “return of a death” certificate was located. It carried the word “riot.”

NCCHR Truth and Transformation Initiative, with the Georgia Civil Rights Cold Cases Project and the Afro-American Genealogical Historical Society

What we don't know

  • His occupation
  • Who his family were
  • Where exactly he was shot

Sources

  1. National Center for Civil and Human Rights, “Unearthing the Past: Identifying Victims of the 1906 Atlanta Race Massacre”

One of the twenty-five

Not named

No name for this person has been recovered from the record.

Date
September 1906

What we don't know

  • Name
  • Age
  • Occupation
  • Where they lived
  • Where they died
  • Where they are buried
  • Whether anyone was left to look for them

Sixteen of the twenty-five have been identified by name. This person has not. The 2023 identifications of Marshall Carter and Stinson Ferguson came from Fulton County death certificates that had been on file the whole time, and that search continues.

Sources

  1. Fulton County Remembrance Coalition, “Atlanta Race Massacre of 1906 Narrative”
  2. Equal Justice Initiative and the Fulton County Remembrance Coalition have documented 25 Black people killed.

One of the twenty-five

Not named

No name for this person has been recovered from the record.

Date
September 1906

What we don't know

  • Name
  • Age
  • Occupation
  • Where they lived
  • Where they died
  • Where they are buried
  • Whether anyone was left to look for them

Sixteen of the twenty-five have been identified by name. This person has not. The 2023 identifications of Marshall Carter and Stinson Ferguson came from Fulton County death certificates that had been on file the whole time, and that search continues.

Sources

  1. Fulton County Remembrance Coalition, “Atlanta Race Massacre of 1906 Narrative”
  2. Equal Justice Initiative and the Fulton County Remembrance Coalition have documented 25 Black people killed.

One of the twenty-five

Not named

No name for this person has been recovered from the record.

Date
September 1906

What we don't know

  • Name
  • Age
  • Occupation
  • Where they lived
  • Where they died
  • Where they are buried
  • Whether anyone was left to look for them

Sixteen of the twenty-five have been identified by name. This person has not. The 2023 identifications of Marshall Carter and Stinson Ferguson came from Fulton County death certificates that had been on file the whole time, and that search continues.

Sources

  1. Fulton County Remembrance Coalition, “Atlanta Race Massacre of 1906 Narrative”
  2. Equal Justice Initiative and the Fulton County Remembrance Coalition have documented 25 Black people killed.

One of the twenty-five

Not named

No name for this person has been recovered from the record.

Date
September 1906

What we don't know

  • Name
  • Age
  • Occupation
  • Where they lived
  • Where they died
  • Where they are buried
  • Whether anyone was left to look for them

Sixteen of the twenty-five have been identified by name. This person has not. The 2023 identifications of Marshall Carter and Stinson Ferguson came from Fulton County death certificates that had been on file the whole time, and that search continues.

Sources

  1. Fulton County Remembrance Coalition, “Atlanta Race Massacre of 1906 Narrative”
  2. Equal Justice Initiative and the Fulton County Remembrance Coalition have documented 25 Black people killed.

One of the twenty-five

Not named

No name for this person has been recovered from the record.

Date
September 1906

What we don't know

  • Name
  • Age
  • Occupation
  • Where they lived
  • Where they died
  • Where they are buried
  • Whether anyone was left to look for them

Sixteen of the twenty-five have been identified by name. This person has not. The 2023 identifications of Marshall Carter and Stinson Ferguson came from Fulton County death certificates that had been on file the whole time, and that search continues.

Sources

  1. Fulton County Remembrance Coalition, “Atlanta Race Massacre of 1906 Narrative”
  2. Equal Justice Initiative and the Fulton County Remembrance Coalition have documented 25 Black people killed.

One of the twenty-five

Not named

No name for this person has been recovered from the record.

Date
September 1906

What we don't know

  • Name
  • Age
  • Occupation
  • Where they lived
  • Where they died
  • Where they are buried
  • Whether anyone was left to look for them

Sixteen of the twenty-five have been identified by name. This person has not. The 2023 identifications of Marshall Carter and Stinson Ferguson came from Fulton County death certificates that had been on file the whole time, and that search continues.

Sources

  1. Fulton County Remembrance Coalition, “Atlanta Race Massacre of 1906 Narrative”
  2. Equal Justice Initiative and the Fulton County Remembrance Coalition have documented 25 Black people killed.

One of the twenty-five

Not named

No name for this person has been recovered from the record.

Date
September 1906

What we don't know

  • Name
  • Age
  • Occupation
  • Where they lived
  • Where they died
  • Where they are buried
  • Whether anyone was left to look for them

Sixteen of the twenty-five have been identified by name. This person has not. The 2023 identifications of Marshall Carter and Stinson Ferguson came from Fulton County death certificates that had been on file the whole time, and that search continues.

Sources

  1. Fulton County Remembrance Coalition, “Atlanta Race Massacre of 1906 Narrative”
  2. Equal Justice Initiative and the Fulton County Remembrance Coalition have documented 25 Black people killed.

One of the twenty-five

Not named

No name for this person has been recovered from the record.

Date
September 1906

What we don't know

  • Name
  • Age
  • Occupation
  • Where they lived
  • Where they died
  • Where they are buried
  • Whether anyone was left to look for them

Sixteen of the twenty-five have been identified by name. This person has not. The 2023 identifications of Marshall Carter and Stinson Ferguson came from Fulton County death certificates that had been on file the whole time, and that search continues.

Sources

  1. Fulton County Remembrance Coalition, “Atlanta Race Massacre of 1906 Narrative”
  2. Equal Justice Initiative and the Fulton County Remembrance Coalition have documented 25 Black people killed.

One of the twenty-five

Not named

No name for this person has been recovered from the record.

Date
September 1906

What we don't know

  • Name
  • Age
  • Occupation
  • Where they lived
  • Where they died
  • Where they are buried
  • Whether anyone was left to look for them

Sixteen of the twenty-five have been identified by name. This person has not. The 2023 identifications of Marshall Carter and Stinson Ferguson came from Fulton County death certificates that had been on file the whole time, and that search continues.

Sources

  1. Fulton County Remembrance Coalition, “Atlanta Race Massacre of 1906 Narrative”
  2. Equal Justice Initiative and the Fulton County Remembrance Coalition have documented 25 Black people killed.

History

What We Know

What Survives

Only six images related to the massacre are known to survive.

Georgia State militia on Peachtree Street just south of Five Points, in the aftermath of the massacre.
Photograph 1 of 2Militia on Peachtree Street, just south of Five Points, in the aftermath. Atlanta History Center
Members of the Georgia State Militia halted on Marietta Street near Peachtree Street.
Photograph 2 of 2Militia halted on Marietta Street near Peachtree, the street where the mob left three of its victims. Atlanta History Center
Harper's Weekly image of militia and a streetcar at Walton and Peachtree Streets.
Illustration 1 of 4Harper's Weekly: troops lining the streets at Walton and Peachtree after the riot call was tolled. Atlanta History Center
A page from Collier's Weekly showing a Brownsville storefront.
Illustration 2 of 4Collier's Weekly on Brownsville, the neighborhood that armed itself. Atlanta History Center
Cover of Le Petit Journal, 7 October 1906: 'Massacre of Negroes at Atlanta.'
Illustration 3 of 4Le Petit Journal, Paris, October 7. The massacre as Europe saw it, fifteen days later. Atlanta History Center
Cover of Le Petit Parisien, 14 October 1906: 'Massacre of Negroes through the streets of Atlanta.'
Illustration 4 of 4Le Petit Parisien, Paris, October 14. Two different French covers a week apart. Atlanta was world news. Atlanta History Center

The sources

Built on Black Labor

A city built on Black labor.

Atlanta grew from 89,000 people in 1900 to 150,000 by 1910. The Black population grew fastest of all.

Forty years after Union troops left the city in ruins, Atlanta had rebuilt itself as the railroad hub of the South, and Black Atlantans had built much of it. They also built their own city inside it: six colleges, churches, newspapers, insurance companies, groceries, pharmacies and barbershops.

Then two men ran for governor, and both promised to stop Black Georgians voting at all.

Hoke Smith had published the Atlanta Journal. He campaigned to add literacy tests and property requirements to the state constitution, written so that they would disqualify Black voters and spare poor white ones, and he won the primary in August 1906, a month before the massacre. Clark Howell owned the Atlanta Constitution and ran against him, arguing that the poll tax and the white primary already kept Black Georgians from the ballot. Each man had a newspaper at his disposal, and through that summer both used it to frighten white readers about their Black neighbors and to sell papers doing it.

Bird's-eye view of Atlanta, 1871.
Atlanta in 1871, six years after the war. Within a generation it was the commercial capital of the New South. Library of Congress

Silence

A century of silence.

Franklin Garrett, Atlanta's official historian, gave the massacre five pages in his 2,072-page history of the city, and repeated the finding that twelve people had died.

Historians left it largely alone until the civil rights era, and it reached a wide audience only at the turn of this century, when four books appeared in five years. On the centennial in 2006 a coalition of academics and activists organized a year of programs, beginning with a funeral motorcade and a memorial at George Union Wilder's grave. In 2007 the massacre entered Georgia's public school curriculum.

In 2019, community members collected soil from the sites where people were killed. In 2022, three historical markers were dedicated. In 2023, researchers found the death certificates of Marshall Carter, aged thirteen, and Stinson Ferguson, aged twenty-five, and added two more names to the count. In 2025 a mural went up in Brownsville, and was revised after the community said it had not been consulted.

The name changed too. For most of a century this was called the Atlanta Race Riot, a phrase that puts Black Atlantans in the street starting the violence. They were the ones attacked, in their workplaces, on streetcars and at home, by white mobs the city let run for four days.

The twenty-five victimsSourcesThe 120th Year Since 1906
The Fulton County Remembrance Coalition's historical marker for the 1906 Atlanta Race Massacre.
The Fulton County Remembrance Coalition gathered soil from the sites where people were killed in 2019, dedicated three markers in 2022, and worked with the National Center for Civil and Human Rights (NCCHR) to identify Marshall Carter and Stinson Ferguson in 2023. Courtesy of the Coalition

Learn More

Our tour · Twelve places · Read it, walk it or ride it

The 1906 Path of Mob Violence

The places where it happened, in order, from First Congregational Church to South-View Cemetery, each with its history, photographs and sources. Read it from anywhere. On the route, it uses your phone's location to tell you what happened at each place as you reach it.

Take the tour

Five Points in downtown Atlanta today: a painted crosswalk, traffic lights and a parking deck with a mural.
Five Points today, where the mob gathered on the night of September 22. From the tour.

This history is free to learn, and free to teach.

The 1906 Atlanta Race Massacre has been part of Georgia's social studies curriculum since 2007. NCCHR has built free classroom tools around it, and this site keeps its own sources open to everyone.

Documentary Short

A Short Telling of the Story

Never Again

“Never Again Will Terror Prevail, Always Again Will The Resilient Arise!”

Never Again: The 1906 Atlanta Race Massacre was directed by Rev. Trent Frank for FrankinSense Productions LLC. It sets 1906 among the other American cities where white mobs attacked Black neighborhoods. It is also, in the filmmakers' words, a story of Black resilient leadership, resistance, racial reconciliation, coalition building, and societal change.

The Inaugural Documentary Screening is on Thursday, September 24 at All Saints' Episcopal Church, and it opens the three-day Mini-Conference. The Coalition presents the film. FrankinSense Productions and the Coalition are separate organizations.

Register for the screeningThe film's own site

The opening frame of the trailer for Never Again: The 1906 Atlanta Race Massacre.
Trailer, 1:47. Never Again: The 1906 Atlanta Race Massacre. Courtesy of FrankinSense Productions LLC
A still from the documentary Never Again: The 1906 Atlanta Race Massacre.
From Never Again: The 1906 Atlanta Race Massacre. Courtesy of FrankinSense Productions LLC

The Coalition

Getting the Story Told

We don't own the story.

We make sure it's told. The Coalition carries forward work that began on the centennial in 2006, when a group of academics and activists organized a year of programs about an event Atlanta had spent most of a century not discussing.

Vision & Mission

Vision

To activate community memory toward fostering racial reconciliation, systemic restoration, and community preservation, in order to inspire rising through resilience, so that Atlanta becomes a city where equity and justice truly prevail, and where the ravages of racial disparities and hatred are relics of the past.

Mission

The Coalition promotes the four abiding actions of Remembering, Reconciling, Restoring, and Resisting by partnering with member organizations and the community to facilitate in six spheres — Remembrance Events, Scholarly Engagement, Community Commerce Building, Community Dialogue, Civic Empowerment, and Arts & Cultural Expression — to present the historical truths about the devastating and long-term traumatic effects of racial atrocities against African Americans, as typified by the 1906 Atlanta Race Massacre, and to contend with these historical truths and the current realities of racial injustice in Georgia.

Bridge

The Coalition carries out its Mission primarily through the First Annual 1906 Remembrance Exposition Week — its permanent platform for facilitation — and, as development dictates, through complementary programming throughout the year.

What We Hold To

  • 01

    We are a facilitator, not a program operator — we convene and enable member organizations rather than run programs ourselves.

  • 02

    Our framework is the Four Rs: Remember, Reconcile, Restore, Resist.

  • 03

    We name a recurring pattern of building and dispossession — “Built, Pillaged, Built, Pillaged, Built” — 1906 as an instance in a longer arc, not an aberration.

  • 04

    The Exposition is a permanent annual institution, not a one-time event.

  • 05

    Our posture is proactive and restorative: truth first, then reconciliation, then action.

Coalition Leadership

  • Portrait of Rev. Trent Frank

    Rev. Trent Frank

    Board President

    Overall Planning & Film Screening · Founding Co-Convener

  • Portrait of Dr. Clarissa Myrick-Harris White

    Dr. Clarissa Myrick-Harris White

    Board Vice President

    Partnerships · History Exhibit & Exposition Digital Collection

  • Portrait of Ms. Adria Kitchens

    Ms. Adria Kitchens

    Board Treasurer

    Co-Director, Exposition Mini-Conference · Equitable Dinner

  • Portrait of Ms. Sharron Paige-Whitaker

    Ms. Sharron Paige-Whitaker

    Board Secretary

    Future Awards Programs

  • Portrait of Dr. R. Candy Tate

    Dr. R. Candy Tate

    Chair, Standing Committee for the 1906 Remembrance Exposition

    Partnerships & Website · Founding Co-Convener, Former Board President

  • Portrait of Rev. Dr. Brendan A. Jenkins

    Rev. Dr. Brendan A. Jenkins

    Vice-Chair, Standing Committee for the 1906 Remembrance Exposition

    Co-Director, Exposition Mini-Conference · Community Commerce Building

  • Portrait of Ms. Winifred Hemphill, JD

    Ms. Winifred Hemphill, JD

    Board Member

    Memorial History · South-View Cemetery Association

Coalition Leadership

Portrait of Rev. Trent Frank

Rev. Trent Frank

Board President

Overall Planning & Film Screening · Founding Co-Convener

As an ordained minister and former pastor, Trent works to address matters of racial injustice through the reconciliation, love, power, strategy, and resistance exemplified by the Gospel. As a former community organizer with the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) in New Orleans, Louisiana, and Atlanta, Georgia, Trent seeks to work alongside communities, unifying grassroots leaders and turning shared struggle into collective power. Trent served as Executive Director of Southern Truth and Reconciliation (STAR), where he worked to convene communities around truth-telling and repair, and where he continues to serve as an advisor. Trent applies a disciplined approach to building durable institutions, tracing back to his years of service as a Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army, where he developed the organizational rigor and strategic grounding in U.S. history and nation-building that now inform his work in community and coalition-building. Trent obtained his bachelor’s degree from Morehouse College, his Master of Divinity (M.Div.) from the Candler School of Theology at Emory University and is currently completing his Ph.D. in Organizational Leadership with an emphasis in community engagement and coalition building from Regent University. As a founding co-convener of the 1906 Coalition, he works to bring to light the little-known history, leadership legacy, and unsettling truths of the racial experience in the United States, the South, and Atlanta in the years before, during, and after the 1906 Atlanta Race Massacre.

Coalition Leadership

Portrait of Dr. Clarissa Myrick-Harris White

Dr. Clarissa Myrick-Harris White

Board Vice President

Partnerships · History Exhibit & Exposition Digital Collection

Dr. Clarissa Myrick-Harris White is a Professor of Africana Studies and co-founder of the Black Men’s Research Institute at Morehouse College, where she serves as co-principal investigator of the Morehouse Movement, Memory, and Justice (MMJ) Project. She is an advisor to the National Center for Civil and Human Rights’ Truth and Transformation Initiative and a member of the Board of Directors of the APEX Museum. Her research and publications focus on leadership during the Civil Rights and Black Power/Black Arts movements; she is currently working on the edited volume Keep Pushing! The Atlanta Student Movement’s Quest for Civil Rights, Demand for Black Power, and Lessons for 21st Century Human Rights Struggles. In 2006, she co-produced the documentary When Blacks Succeed: The 1906 Atlanta Race Riot. More recently, she served as a historical consultant for the documentary Invisible Warriors: African American Women in World War II and as an advisor for the Atlanta Student Movement episode of Season 2 of Netflix’s High on the Hog. A scholar-activist, she was a member of the original Coalition to Remember the 1906 Atlanta Race Riot formed for the centennial commemoration, and as Board Vice President, she now carries that same historical and archival expertise into the current 1906 Coalition’s History Exhibit and Exposition Digital Collection.

Coalition Leadership

Portrait of Ms. Adria Kitchens

Ms. Adria Kitchens

Board Treasurer

Co-Director, Exposition Mini-Conference · Equitable Dinner

As Activism Director and a Co-Executive Director of Out of Hand Theater, Adria Kitchens (she/her) is at the forefront of driving collective transformation, fostering connection and healing, and taking positive anti-racism action. She leads Equitable Dinners, using art and dialogue to activate and inspire positive change; Equitable Dinners has reached over 12,000 people since January 2020. Adria is also a co-designer of Out of Hand’s Community Impact Lab (formerly the Institute for Equity Activism), building equity capacity in leaders through the power of the arts, and has coached thousands in using relational power as a pathway for transformation. She is a Senior Faculty Coach for The Institute for Woman-Centered Coaching, Training, and Leadership, serving women leaders in over 43 countries, and is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University. As Board Treasurer, Adria brings that same relational, arts-driven approach to the 1906 Coalition’s Equitable Dinner and its broader work of dialogue and community healing.

Coalition Leadership

Portrait of Ms. Sharron Paige-Whitaker

Ms. Sharron Paige-Whitaker

Board Secretary

Future Awards Programs

Sharron Paige-Whitaker serves as Board Secretary for the Coalition to Remember the 1906 Atlanta Race Massacre. She spent more than 35 years as an Outreach Coordinator for Emory University School of Medicine, working with the Maternal Substance Abuse and Child Development (MSACD) Project. Her community leadership includes service as Vice President of Programs and Youth Program Director for the Atlanta Branch of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) since 2016, and as Assistant Committee Chair for the Band and Parade with Juneteenth Atlanta since 2017. Family life became Sharron’s center in the 1990s as she focused on her husband, son, and godchildren, and, upon that foundation of love for family and community, she went on to found Break Free Drug/Alcohol Ministries and Nation of Youth Rising Ministry, both dedicated to mentoring at-risk youth, and to serve in youth advisory, arts, and publicity roles with the Potters Wheel Prayer Ministry, the Atlanta Council of PTAs’ Reflections Art Program, and Friends of Fountain Hall at Morris Brown College. She holds a Biblical Studies certificate from the Cathedral of Faith Church of God in Christ’s School of the Prophets and studied at Morris Brown College and Georgia State University. With the 1906 Coalition, Sharron brings decades of grounding in youth mentorship and community service to the work of remembrance, reconciliation, and restoration.

Coalition Leadership

Portrait of Dr. R. Candy Tate

Dr. R. Candy Tate

Chair, Standing Committee for the 1906 Remembrance Exposition

Partnerships & Website · Founding Co-Convener, Former Board President

Dr. Rachanice “Candy” Tate chairs the 1906 Coalition’s Standing Committee for the 1906 Remembrance Exposition and previously served as the Coalition’s Board President. She is also Chief Culture Officer of Culture Centers International (CCI), a 501(c)(3) devoted to historic preservation through the arts and serving as the 1906 project’s fiduciary. She served the arts for 35 years at Emory University (Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory Arts) and the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE). Her fundraising work through the Atlanta Branch of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) and CCI has garnered more than $4M for the restoration of Morris Brown College’s Fountain Hall. She is now Curator and Co-Director of The Legacy Museum at Tuskegee University, continuing to expand learning through the arts by adding the “A” to STEM to produce STEAAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Agriculture, and Math). Her research agenda includes oral history projects on Morris Brown alumni and Black photographers, with forthcoming published work on the Women of 1906, art and healing in African American healthcare disparities, and Southern expressions of the Black Arts Movement. She is a trailblazer in the arts field and winner of the 2024 Legacy Award from the Buckhead/Cascade City (GA) Chapter of The Links, Incorporated. An alumna of Emory University, Georgia State University, the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, and Clark Atlanta University, and a founding co-convener of the 1906 Coalition, she brings that same fundraising expertise to its exposition and preservation work.

Coalition Leadership

Portrait of Rev. Dr. Brendan A. Jenkins

Rev. Dr. Brendan A. Jenkins

Vice-Chair, Standing Committee for the 1906 Remembrance Exposition

Co-Director, Exposition Mini-Conference · Community Commerce Building

Rev. Dr. Brendan A. Jenkins, D.Min., is the Pastor and founder of Virtual Church Community of Faith, a community-based ministry committed to a nontraditional approach to ministry, reaching the disgruntled, dismayed and disappointed believer. With over 30 years of ministry and leadership experience, he brings vision, wisdom, and a proven track record of equipping leaders, building ministries, and advancing the Kingdom. Dr. Jenkins received his Bachelor of Science in Sociology/English from the University of Houston, the Master of Divinity from Morehouse School of Religion (I.T.C.), and the Doctor of Ministry from Samford University’s Beeson Divinity School. His dissertation topic and upcoming book address mediating and reconciling conflict biblically. His commitment to the suffering has led him to serve as a Spiritual Health Clinician with Emory University Hospital. He has a passion for social justice, preaching to set the captives free and liberating the least of these for the cause of Christ. As a Public Theologian and Community Leader, he served as Co-Chair of the Coalition to Remember the 1906 Atlanta Race Massacre in 2025 and is now Vice-Chair of the First Annual 1906 Remembrance Exposition Week, focusing on the economic empowerment of the entrepreneurs and community leaders who are the pioneers of Atlanta’s “Black Mecca.” His mission is to empower, edify, inspire and equip for the transformation from believer in Christ to Disciple of Christ.

Coalition Leadership

Portrait of Ms. Winifred Hemphill, JD

Ms. Winifred Hemphill, JD

Board Member

Memorial History · South-View Cemetery Association

Winifred “Wini” Watts Hemphill serves as President of the South-View Cemetery Association, one of the oldest continuously operating stockholder corporations in the Southeast. Chartered in 1886 by formerly enslaved men denied dignified burials, South-View is the final resting place of more than 90,000 people, including Rev. Martin Luther King Sr. and Alberta Williams King, Congressman John Lewis, Hank Aaron, John Wesley Dobbs, and many other Atlantans who shaped the city and the nation. Hemphill is the great-granddaughter of Albert Watts, one of the cemetery founders, and her family has led its management for well over a century. In 2004, the Historic South-View Preservation Foundation — a 501(c)(3) dedicated to preserving the cemetery’s historic, non-perpetual-care acreage and expanding public engagement with its history through educational programming and community events — was founded. Under her leadership, South-View was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2026. She has served on the Board of Directors of the Southern Cemetery, Cremation & Funeral Association and is a past officer of the Georgia Cemetery Association. Hemphill practiced law for more than 20 years before coming to lead her family’s institution, and is a graduate of Howard University and Howard University School of Law. She is married to Dana A. Hemphill, and they have three adult children and two grandchildren. Her decades of work preserving Black Atlanta history and honoring its dead align naturally with the 1906 Coalition mission of remembrance, and she joins the Board to help ensure that history is not forgotten.

Coalition Archives

The programs from earlier years of remembrance, and the sources this site is built on.

Archives and past yearsEngage with the workSourcesThe deeper history

Collaborators

Leading the Way

These organizations make the week possible by sharing what they steward.

In addition to offering their counsel and leadership, they are opening their venues — sacred and civic spaces — mounting the exhibits, convening the panels, hosting the dinners, and grounding it all in scholarship and art.

Press

In the News

The Press Room

The First Annual 1906 Remembrance Exposition Week — Press Materials

The First Annual 1906 Remembrance Exposition Week runs September 20-26, 2026, at venues across Atlanta, under the theme Truth, Reconciliation, and Action. It marks the 120th year since the 1906 Atlanta Race Massacre, when white mobs killed at least 25 Black Atlantans over four days and no one was brought to justice. The Coalition has built the week to return every September as a permanent annual institution. Ambassador Andrew Young serves as Honorary Exposition Chair.

Press contact

exposition@the1906coalition.org

Coalition leadership is available for interview. Print-resolution files and event photography are available on request; captions and credit lines run as supplied.

Downloads · current files, posted September 19, 2026

Each day's flyer: Sun · Mon · Tue · Thu · Fri · Sat

Historical images · free to publish, with the credit shown

The week at a glance

  • Sun · Sep 20

    • 10 AM Crowdfunding Campaign Goes Live · Online
    • 11 AM-1 PM Truth & Reconciliation Worship Service · First Congregational Church
    • 2 PM Car Processional to South-View Cemetery · Departs First Congregational Church
    • 3 PM-5 PM Equitable Dinner at Drew Charter School · Drew Charter School, Yates Campus
    • 3 PM-5 PM South-View Cemetery Tour & Remembrance · South-View Cemetery
    • 5 PM The Praise House Experience · 1884 Jonesboro Rd SE, across from South-View Cemetery

  • Mon · Sep 21

    • 5 PM-7:30 PM Fulton County Reparations Harm Report Panel Discussion · Auburn Avenue Research Library

  • Tue · Sep 22

    • 6 PM-8 PM History Exhibit Opening Reception & 1906 Timeline Presentation · APEX Museum
    • Tue-Sat The 1906 History Exhibit · APEX Museum

  • Thu · Sep 24

    • 6:30 PM-8:30 PM 1906 Inaugural Documentary Screening & Town Hall Engagement · All Saints' Episcopal Church

  • Fri · Sep 25

    • 6:30 PM-8:30 PM A Special Equitable Dinner · All Saints' Episcopal Church

  • Sat · Sep 26

    • 9 AM-3 PM Truth, Reconciliation & Action Workshop with Call to Action · All Saints' Episcopal Church

The full scheduleThe week on one page (PDF)

In the News

Engage

You Make It Happen

Remember. Reconcile. Restore. Resist.

Zeffy charges nonprofits no platform or processing fee, so every dollar of a gift reaches the work. Donations are tax-deductible upon 501(c)(3) approval.

1906 Atlanta Race Massacre Exposition Campaign · Sunday, September 20 at 10:00 AM to Saturday, September 26 at 2:00 PM · Online

Give to Remember, Give to Restore: Recognizing 120 Years since 1906

This crowdfunding campaign recognizes the 120th year since the 1906 Atlanta Race Massacre. Your gift helps us honor the lives lost, keep the story told in full, and sustain the truth-telling, learning, remembrance, and community action that guide this Exposition.

We would be grateful for your support at every level. Every gift helps make you part of Truth, Reconciliation, and Action.

Give to the campaign

Community events · Sunday, September 20 to Tuesday, September 22 · Free

Each event Sunday through Tuesday has its own RSVP; the Mini-Conference requires registration, with a recommended tiered contribution and an option to register at no cost.

Event RSVPRegister for the Mini-Conference

6 Ways to Make a Difference

Never Again Shirts

Two shirts that say 1906 Atlanta Race Massacre, Never Again.

All proceeds go to the Coalition. Printed to order in Atlanta by Muskrat & Rorke on heavyweight cotton. $26 each, sizes S to 3XL. You order on their site, and they ship it.

Follow the Coalition

Volunteer

The 1906 Remembrance Exposition Week is carried by its volunteers. Whether you can give one morning or the whole week, there is a place for you: Welcoming guests, telling the history, supporting the dinners, or capturing the week for others to see. No experience is needed, only a willingness to help this story be told. Give your time, and we’ll give you a front-row seat to Truth, Reconciliation, and Action.

Usher and event support shifts · September 20-26, 2026

  • Truth & Reconciliation Worship Service

    Sunday, September 20 · 10:00 AM to 12:30 PM

    Sign up

  • Car Processional to South-View Cemetery

    Sunday, September 20 · 1:30 to 3:30 PM

    Sign up

  • Fulton County Reparations Harm Report Panel Discussion

    Monday, September 21 · 4:00 to 8:00 PM

    Sign up

  • History Exhibit Opening Reception

    Tuesday, September 22 · 5:00 to 8:00 PM

    Sign up

  • 1906 Inaugural Documentary Screening & Town Hall Engagement

    Thursday, September 24 · 5:30 to 9:00 PM

    Sign up

  • A Special Equitable Dinner

    Friday, September 25 · 5:30 to 8:30 PM

    Sign up

  • Truth, Reconciliation & Action Workshop

    Saturday, September 26 · 8:00 AM to 12:00 PM

    Sign up

Sign-up is handled by Hands On Atlanta, and each link opens that shift in your browser. The times are volunteer shifts, which start before each event and run past it.

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