By Ann Taylor Boutwell
July 1, 1946: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was established on Peachtree Street in Downtown under the name Communicable Disease Center, a name it would retain until 1967.
July 4, 1979: In just a decade, the Peachtree Road Race grew from 110 runners to 20,000. Tim Singleton, a 1950s Georgia Tech football and track athlete, is credited as a founder of the race.
July 8, 1941: Hamilton E. Holmes was born in Atlanta. In 1961, he would become one of the first African-Americans, along with Charlayne Hunter, admitted to the University of Georgia in Athens. After graduating cum laude, he would become the first black student admitted to the Emory School of Medicine.
July 8, 1908: Thomas E. Watson, seeking nomination for U.S. President as a member of the Populist Party, spoke at the Nicholas Auditorium at the Ponce de Leon Amusement Park. As a Congressman from Georgia, Watson is best known as the senator who pushed through Rural Free Delivery (RFD) in 1893, which required the U.S. Postal Service to deliver mail to rural farms. He was also a prominent newspaperman, creating the publications Watsons Magazine and The Jeffersonian, and was later vilified for anti-Semitic views expressed during the appeal of factory manager Leo Frank, who was found guilty of murdering employee Mary Phagan. A statue of Watson stands across from the Georgia State Capitol in Park Plaza.
July 19, 1996: The opening ceremony for the Centennial Olympic Games is held in what is now Turner Field.
July 20, 1879: Joel Chandler Harris published his first Uncle Remus story in the Atlanta Constitution. The title was “Story of Mr. Rabbit and Mr. Fox as told by Uncle Remus.” Within months, magazines across the country were reprinting his tales, and after more than 1,000 written requests for a collection, the first Uncle Remus book was published in November, 1880.
July 24, 1985: Former President Jimmy Carter stood in the drizzling rain and shoveled the red clay where the future Japanese garden designed by renowned landscape artist Kinsaku Nakane would be built on the site of the Carter Presidential Library.
