1950 to Today

During the latter half of the twentieth century, mass communication, including improved telephones, radio, and television, exposed Maconites to new views and ideas. Family farms were becoming more of an exception than rule, and airplane travel became routine. Individually owned automobiles and a new interstate system became the preferred mode of travel. In 1971 Macon witnessed the last run of the Nancy Hanks—the legendary passenger train connecting Savannah-Macon-Atlanta—and the abandonment of Terminal Station.

Macon’s social currents quickened during this era. With the civil rights movement in Macon in the 1950s and 1960s, black leadership and a generation of African American citizens prepared the way for the gains experienced by Macon’s entire community. The city no longer tolerated segregation by race, and Jim Crow was banished.

Martin Luther King, Jr., who led the civil rights movement, visited Macon during his nationwide campaign to end segregation. Although Dr. King was unable to cross the river, his vision, so poignantly expressed in the following words, was fulfilled in Macon:

…That one day on the red dirt hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and sons of slave owners would be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.¹⁴

In honor of Dr. King, Broadway was renamed Martin Luther King Boulevard.
War hero and African American Sergeant Rodney Davis, Macon’s only Medal of Honor winner, made the ultimate sacrifice for his country and fellow soldiers during the Viet Nam War by smothering a grenade with his own body. Davis personified Macon’s progress on issues of human rights and freedom, where a person is judged by the character of his heart, not the color of his skin. Symbolic of the converging currents in Macon, the Rodney Davis Memorial in Civic Square was erected within site of the 1872 Confederate War Memorial on Cotton Avenue, only two blocks away.

Native American contributions were also recognized in 1997 as the Ocmulgee Old Fields were listed in the National Register of Historic Places as a Traditional Cultural Property, the only such designation east of the Mississippi River.

Middle Georgia’s political currents saw the election of peanut farmer Jimmy Carter as president of the United States, Macon’s first African American mayor, C. Jack Ellis, and the first Republican governor in Georgia since Reconstruction, Sonny Perdue.

The cultural confluence of the Ocmulgee produced legendary musicians and artists. With roots in the church, Macon had the “Jazz Train” along Broadway, the recollections of Otis Redding far from home, the rock of “Little Richard” Penniman, and the roll of the Allman Brothers Band. The threat of demolition spurred Maconites to “save the Douglass Theatre”, which was restored and reopened in 1997. The late Otis Redding was honored in 2002 with a bronze statue ‘sittin on a dock’ overlooking the Ocmulgee River. While classical music of Macon’s Symphony Orchestra plays at the Grand Opera House on Mulberry, jazz and rock entertains up and down Cherry Street. Macon’s notoriety as the “the Song and Soul of the South” comes naturally.

Georgia honored Macon’s musical legacy by locating the Georgia Music Hall of Fame Museum here in 1996. In 2000 the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame was opened nearby.

Today the Ocmulgee at the fall line celebrates a heritage of sacrifice and compassion from diverse traditions. Across the river, visitors encounter the “Earth Lodge” of a 1000 year old civilization and Native American culture at the Ocmulgee National Monument’s Interpretive Center. Macon is home to the Tubman African American Museum where roots are celebrated from Africa to America. While in Macon, visitors can stay at the 1842 Inn and down the street at Judge Asa Holt’s “Cannonball House” observe antebellum history at the museum.

Each spring since 1982, Macon celebrates the International Cherry Blossom Festival. More than 250,000 Yoshino cherry trees most of which were given as seedlings by visionary businessman William Fickling, frame the city’s historic parks, downtown architecture, and neighborhoods. Through Macon’s annual rite of spring renewal, Macon is known as the “Cherry Blossom Capital of the World”.

Macon’s population reached its zenith in 1970 with 125,000 people. In spite of Macon/Bibb County destination related job growth in manufacturing, medical facilities, shopping centers, and Robins Air Base, like other urban centers, the city’s population, through social, economic, and physical pressures, receded to less than 100,000 by the end of the twentieth century, while Bibb County’s population remained virtually the same.

But, Macon and Bibb County’s leadership is working together understanding our future reside in the assets that made this city: Macon’s central location in Georgia and the Sunbelt, Macon’s business hospitality, the multi-modes of transportation, and the natural and historic resources of parks, architecture, and artists. Signaling Macon’s renewal is the development of downtown lofts, restaurants, the Ocmulgee’s riverfront and the communities efforts to return passenger rail to Terminal Station.

With a renewed appreciation for the Ocmulgee river and in honor of the various cultural tributaries of this American confluence, Maconites are building a river walk and trail system. The Ocmulgee Heritage Trail is retracing the footsteps of the “Corn Farmers” and the Muscogee, the trappers and traders, the farmers and shopkeepers, the Civil War and Civil Rights, the poets and musicians.

The Ocmulgee still dances through the piedmont and takes her sweet time through the plains. And at the fall line of the river, where the Piedmont meets the plain, legends are still told of the “mounds of the ancients” and the “city in a park.” So many opportunities for remembering…with our Ocmulgee heritage as a guide, and a future bright with possibilities, Macon’s best stories have yet to be told.