History Center explores legacy of Atlanta 1906 Race Riot

6:30 p.m. and 8 p.m., Friday; 5 p.m., 6:30 p.m. and 8 p.m. Saturday; 2 p.m., 3:30 p.m. and 5 p.m. Sunday; $15 general admission, $10 members, 130 W. Paces Ferry Rd. NW; Atlanta; www.atlantahistorycenter.com or 404-814-4000

In this transient city, where people come to make big money and be seen and where most interactions are transactional, historical memory is often undervalued.

Many people — at least we hope many people — know how the city was shaped by the Civil War. But far fewer know of a race riot in 1906 that left as many as 25 African-Americans and two whites dead on the downtown streets of Atlanta. In the riot’s aftermath, a great tide of African-Americans fled the city for good, and an unspoken but durable peace-keeping alliance was built between the business elite and the black political/middle class that some say endures to this day. The alliance is one of the reasons the city didn’t go up in flames during the social unrest of the 1960s, and it still influences this city’s racial politics.

If you want to know how the pivotal riot happened, you should head over to the Atlanta History Center this weekend. You can experience it.

In a bold step for the institution, the history center is presenting “Four Days of Fury: Atlanta 1906,” an interactive play about the riots. It’s a first for the center, and it’s an attempt to present a broader view of the city’s history in a live-action way.

“These are hard stories to tell, but it’s part of our mission,” said Hillary Hardwick, vice president of marketing communications for the center.

The play runs through Sunday and will be brought back in September to coincide with the anniversary of the actual riot, which began on Sept. 22, 1906. The history center has used audience participation before, particularly in its programming for schoolchildren. But in a full-on play for adults, “this cuts new ground,” said Catherine Hughes, director of “Four Days.”

Credit: CURTIS COMPTON / AJC

Credit: CURTIS COMPTON / AJC

Here is how it is done, and done to great effect.

The exhibition hall where the play takes place becomes a place where color-blind casting applies not only to the actors, but the audience members who are encouraged to participate. There are no depictions of actual violence. Instead people are led through scenes depicting the causes, overt and subtle, that led to the riot.

It’s more about the social climate of the time, with actual dialogue and characters pulled from historical records such as oral histories, court records and newspaper accounts. We see how Margaret Mitchell was greatly affected by the play “The Clansman,” which later inspired D.W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation.” And if you’ve ever driven down Decatur Street or spent time on what is now the campus of the Atlanta University Center, those locations take on fresh meaning as they were key sites at the time of the conflagration.

But most importantly, the play explores how fear and resentment over the progress of a group of people—in this case defined by race—can lead to violence and ultimately impede progress for everyone.

“It’s a real departure for the history center and I welcome it,” said Cliff Kuhn, a history professor at Georgia State University, who for years has led a walking tour of sites in downtown Atlanta that were flashpoints in the riot. “It prompts a deeper conversation about where we’ve been as a city and it talks about the city’s past in an unromantic way.”

At the history center’s request, early on Rebecca Burns, author of “Rage in the Gate City: The Story of the 1906 Atlanta Race Riot,” reviewed the script for the production. After reading it she was of two minds. On the one hand she was pleased that the center was taking on such a volatile event, one that shaped the city’s racial dynamics for generations, if not to this day. But she also had concern.

“It’s a really horrible chapter in Atlanta’s history and how do you talk about that in this interactive format and not have the horrors be overwhelming to the participants, but also not gloss over the complexities of the event,” said Burns, deputy editor of Atlanta Magazine.

Playwright Addae Moon and Hughes have not shied away from the raw nature of the events, but have presented them with a skillful hand and good measure of conscience. Viewers never see portrayals of the atrocities committed in the actual riot, where men were hanged on lamp posts downtown and bodies mutilated and dumped in the streets.