This video tells the story of how slavery ended in Athens, Georgia, on May 4th, 1865, and the beginnings of freedom for thousands of men, women, and children.

Directed by Emani Saucier and produced by Athens Historical Society, Film Committee, 2024.

The Knox Institute was one of the first schools for Black Georgians after the Civil War. Founded in 1868 by the Freedmen’s Bureau, the school was a hallmark of Black Athens. Knox increasingly taught vocational skills and trained students for sixty years until it closed in 1928. As a private school, it relied on financial support from local Black Athenians and sympathetic white philanthropists like Andrew Carnegie, who donated a brick school building. Prominent Black Athenians like Monroe “Pink” Morton and Hall Johnson attended the school. In 1933, the Athens High and Industrial School, a prominent Black public school, acquired the Knox campus. Today, all that remains of the Knox Institute is a vacant lot.

Produced as part of AHS’s K12 Film Project by Milk Crate Media

Learn about the industrialization of Athens, one of the first factory towns in Georgia. Examine how industrialization in the South was linked to slavery until the very end of the Civil War.