The grand opening of the Otis Redding Center for the Arts (Orca) was held March 18th in Macon. The new facility will serve children between 5-18 thoughts the arts and musical education.
The Odd Fellows Building was suggested by Black newspaper editor Benjamin J. Davis (1870-1945), designed by white Atlanta architect William A. Edwards (1866-1939) and built by Robert E. Pharrow, owner of an African-American construction company. Despite the Jim Crow era, the two men, Black and white, worked side by side toward completing the structure.
“This building is really an upscale fortress,” noted Dr. Stuart Noel, Director of the Reid House HOA Board. “If you were to pick the most famous Atlanta names past and present, many have called Reid House home.” Alston, Candler, Dewberry, Dorsey, Inman, Lanier and Woodruff — a residents' roll call.
In his storied career, he amassed 12 state titles — nine at Southwest DeKalb, three with Gordon High School — and an induction into the Georgia Athletic Coaches Association Hall of Fame."He defined track and field around here.”
Hailed by the New York Times as the “leader of a new generation of opera stars,” and christened “opera’s nose-studded rock star,” Rome, Georgia's Mezzo-Soprano Jamie Barton has blown off the stodgy opera dust of a few centuries.
Since its 1995 inception, The Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation has committed more than $1 billion in giving. “The needs in our society are more profound than at any point in my lifetime," Blank says.
Jeff Hullinger speaks with renowned artist Steve Penley. Born in Chattanooga, raised in Macon, schooled in Athens, living in Atlanta, Penley is as southern as Grizzard, Bisher, and Governor Joe Frank Harris. “The South influences everything I paint, and everything I am.”
