History UnderfootAtlanta

The shell-struck lamppost and Solomon Luckie

An iron gas lamppost at Whitehall and Alabama Sts was hit by a Federal shell; a fragment mortally wounded Solomon Luckie, a free Black barber.

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The record

Solomon Luckie died of the wound despite medical care. He is one of about twenty civilians killed during the five-week bombardment of a city where about 3,000 people had stayed. The lamppost survives in Underground Atlanta with a 1919 UDC plaque (rededicated 1939 as 'The Eternal Flame of the Confederacy'). The plaque dates the shell damage to July 22, 1864; the exact date of Luckie's wounding is uncertain.