The city of Marietta on Martin Luther King Jr. Day will honor the legacy of the civil rights leader by renaming one of its buildings after its first black elected official.
The city will host a ceremony changing the name of its Lawrence Street Recreation Center to the Hugh L. Grogan Jr. Community Center. Marietta’s event will be held at 4 p.m. Monday, Jan. 20 at the 510 Lawrence Street.
Marietta City Council members in November voted to rename the center after Grogan, who was the first black resident elected to the Marietta City Council.
Grogan served on the Council from 1978 to 1981. He was part of a successful civil rights lawsuit filed in the 1970s against Marietta, charging that its ward map diluted the city’s black vote. The suit resulted in Marietta creating a majority-minority ward, City Councilman Reggie Copeland previously said.
In 1976 and 1978, Grogan served as president of the Marietta chapter of the NAACP, which later became the Cobb County NAACP. Grogan died in July 2009 at the age of 72.
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