Burned to the ground, built to lead
Atlanta burned. General Sherman's forces destroyed the city so completely in 1864 that it later adopted the phoenix, rising from flame, as its official symbol — still stamped into the city seal today. What rose from the ashes led. Coca-Cola was invented here in 1886 by pharmacist John Pemberton, who sold the first glass at Jacob's Pharmacy for five cents and died without knowing what he had made. Sweet Auburn, just east of downtown, became one of the wealthiest Black commercial districts in the country, and it is where Martin Luther King Jr. was born and later preached at Ebenezer Baptist Church. Underground Atlanta exists almost by accident — railroad viaducts were built over the original 19th-century streets, burying the old city in place rather than tearing it down. The Fox Theatre, a 1929 movie palace disguised as a Moorish courtyard, was saved from demolition by a grassroots campaign in the 1970s.
