Browse Exhibits (8 total)

Every four years, the Summer Olympics puts the world’s problems aside and allows for brief moments of unity, appreciation, and healthy competition among countries and cultures. The 1996 Olympics were no different in Atlanta. Our group’s project and research was devoted to the history of the Centennial Olympic Games and how they impacted not only Atlanta, but also Athens and the state of Georgia as a whole. The Olympics take an incredible amount of planning, preparation, and volunteers to ensure the games run smoothly as desired. We were able to uncover some of the behind-the-scenes plans, factoids, and memories about the 1996 Olympics through the UGA Hargrett Special Collections Library. Because Athens was used for various aspects of the Olympics, there were many files, documents, and images from the Olympic Games that helped us obtain a greater understanding of the impact of the Olympic Games. Through the Special Collections Library and the Omeka exhibit software, we are able to learn, present, and instruct others on a crucial past event that helped shape our city and state to where we are today.

This exhibit examines the contributions that residence halls at the University of Georgia have made to the university’s vast history. Over thirty residence halls have been constructed at the University of Georgia since its founding in 1785. Many of these residence halls still hold their original purpose, while others have been demolished or modified for other uses. The residence halls at the University of Georgia each hold interesting information, and in piecing this information together, the history of the University of Georgia is put together in a unique lens. In this exhibit, the audience is taken on a tour of the University of Georgia through eleven notable residence halls. Information in this exhibit is drawn from the Special Collections Library, Hargrett Rare Book & Manuscript Library, and various digital databases. Information on the residence halls focuses on building development, architecture, modifications, namesake, and interesting stories. As a whole, this exhibit ties together a host of information pertaining to the residence halls at the University of Georgia, and it crafts a unique take on the University of Georgia’s history.

Keywords: Soule Hall, Mary Lyndon Hall, Rutherford Hall, Myers Hall, The Lower Five, Creswell Hall, McWhorter Hall, Vandiver Hall, Joe Brown Hall, Oglethorpe House, Building 1516

This exhibit dives into the racial integration movement at the University of Georgia in 1961-1962. Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton Holmes, the first two African American students to enroll in UGA, made pivotal strides in the integration and acceptance of African-American students at the university. The items of this exhibit reveal that during their time at UGA, both Hunter and Holmes endured hardship in their pursuit of education. Upon the arrival of Hunter and Holmes, many people lashed out in racist revolts, a supreme court case was tried, and the University came under fire for accepting these two students. Through these historic tribulations, the university began making progress in the direction of making UGA the inclusive, diverse school it is today. This exhibit explores documents and artifacts of the 1961-1962 time period of integration, giving different opinions, legal rulings, and multiple perspectives on the process of desegregation of the University of Georgia. 

Mental institutions have a bad stigma around their name and this is mostly due to the history of these institutions, which were originally established to house not only the mentally unstable but the social outcasts within the society. Some common treatments, such as lobotomies and electroshock therapy, typically turned temporary patients into permanent ones due to the unethical harshness and ineffectiveness of the treatments. The eastern United States fueled this stigma as it housed many of these institutions such as South Carolina, Danvers, and North Carolina State Hospitals, Searcy Hospital for the Colored Insane, and even the largest - at the time of operation- in the world, Central State Hospital. Each of these hospitals held its own unique story and added their own encounters to the history of horror stories. These conditions within these institutions would not start to change until reformers, such as Dorthea Dix and Thomas Kirkbride, stepped in to change these notions around them. Endless cases, such as O'Connor v. Donaldson, were brought onto the stand for years until rules and regulations began to change. Even after rules had been in place, current institutions still fight against the stigma that was given to them historically by their predecessors.