- Violence
- Segregation
- September 6, 1966
- City of Atlanta
- General area only
The Summerhill uprising (1966)
On September 6, 1966, police shot and wounded Harold Prather, a Black man fleeing arrest on a warrant, near Capitol Avenue and Ormond Street. Anger over the shooting erupted into rioting in Summerhill that afternoon, beside the new stadium.
The record
Prather was reported to be wanted in a car-theft case. When SNCC workers brought a sound truck so residents could speak about the shooting, police arrested two of them, and the crowd began throwing rocks and bottles (Carmichael v. Allen, 1967). Mayor Ivan Allen Jr. climbed onto a police car to address the crowd but was heckled and knocked off; police then fired into the air and used tear gas, and 30 to 40 people needed hospital treatment. Warrants on riot charges were issued for 14 people, including SNCC chairman Stokely Carmichael, and on September 10 violence broke out in another part of the city. Atlanta–Fulton County Stadium had been completed in 1965 on the cleared Washington–Rawson neighborhood next to Summerhill, feeding what a Georgia urban renewal exhibit calls grievances over 'the false promise of urban renewal'. Summerhill was later one of the six neighborhoods in Atlanta's federal Model Cities program.
Today: Summerhill, now being redeveloped around Georgia State's Center Parc Stadium.
Where on the map: Summerhill between the stadium district and Grant Park.