text:
History of Atlanta

The history of Atlanta dates back to 1836, when Georgia decided to build a railroad to the U.S. Midwest and a location was chosen to be the line's terminus. The stake marking the founding of "Terminus" was driven into the ground in 1837 (called the Zero Mile Post). In 1839, homes and a store were built there and the settlement grew. Between 1845 and 1854, rail lines arrived from four different directions, and the rapidly growing town quickly became the rail hub for the entire Southern United States. During the American Civil War, Atlanta, as a distribution hub, became the target of a major Union campaign, and in 1864, Union William Sherman's troops set on fire and destroyed the city's assets and buildings, save churches and hospitals. After the war, the population grew rapidly, as did manufacturing, while the city retained its role as a rail hub. Coca-Cola was launched here in 1886 and grew into an Atlanta-based world empire. Electric streetcars arrived in 1889, and the city added new "streetcar suburbs".

The city's elite black colleges were founded between 1865 and 1885, and despite disenfranchisement and the later imposition of Jim Crow laws in the 1910s, a prosperous black middle class and upper class emerged. By the early 20th century, "Sweet" Auburn Avenue was called "the most prosperous Negro street in the nation". In the 1950s, black people started moving into city neighborhoods that had previously kept them out, while Atlanta's first freeways enabled large numbers of whites to move to, and commute from, new suburbs. Atlanta was home to Martin Luther King Jr., and a major center for the Civil Rights Movement. Resulting desegregation occurred in stages over the 1960s. Slums were razed and the new Atlanta Housing Authority built public-housing projects.

From the mid-1960s to mid-'1970s, nine suburban malls opened, and the downtown shopping district declined, but just north of it, gleaming office towers and hotels rose, and in 1976, the new Georgia World Congress Center signaled Atlanta's rise as a major convention city. In 1973, the city elected its first black mayor, Maynard Jackson, and in ensuing decades, black political leaders worked successfully with the white business community to promote business growth, while still empowering black businesses. From the mid-1970s to mid-1980s most of the MARTA rapid transit system was built. While the suburbs grew rapidly, much of the city itself deteriorated and the city lost 21% of its population between 1970 and 1990.

In 1996, Atlanta hosted the Summer Olympics, for which new facilities and infrastructure were built. Hometown airline Delta continued to grow, and by 1998-1999, Atlanta's airport was the busiest in the world. Since the mid-1990s, gentrification has given new life to many of the city's intown neighborhoods. The 2010 census showed affluent black people leaving the city for newer exurban properties and growing suburban towns, younger whites moving back to the city, and a much more diverse metropolitan area with heaviest growth in the exurbs at its outer edges.

Native American civilization: before 1836
The region where Atlanta and its suburbs were built was originally Creek and Cherokee Native American territory. In 1813, the Creeks, who had been recruited by the British to assist them in the War of 1812, attacked and burned Fort Mims in southwestern Alabama. The conflict broadened and became known as the Creek War. In response, the United States built a string of forts along the Ocmulgee and Chattahoochee Rivers, including Fort Daniel on top of Hog Mountain near present-day Dacula, Georgia, and Fort Gilmer.

Fort Gilmer was situated next to an important Indian site called Standing Peachtree, a Creek Indian village. The site traditionally marked a Native American meeting place at the boundary between Creek and Cherokee lands, at the point where Peachtree Creek flows into the Chattahoochee. The fort was soon renamed Fort Peachtree. A road was built linking Fort Peachtree and Fort Daniel following the route of existing trails.

As part of the systematic removal of Native Americans from northern Georgia from 1802 to 1825, the Creek ceded the area that is now metro Atlanta in 1821. Four months later, the Georgia Land Lottery Act created five new counties in the area that would later become Atlanta. Dekalb County was created in 1822, from portions of Henry, Fayette, and Gwinnett Counties, and Decatur was created as its county seat the following year. As part of the land lottery, Archibald Holland received a grant for District 14, Land Lot 82: an area of 202.5 acres near the present-day Coca-Cola headquarters. Holland farmed the land and operated a blacksmith shop. However, the land was low-lying and wet, so his cattle often became mired in the mud. He left the area in 1833 to farm in Paulding County.

In 1830, an inn was established that became known as Whitehall due to the then-unusual fact that it had a coat of white paint, when most other buildings were of washed or natural wood. Later, Whitehall Street was built as the road from Atlanta to Whitehall. The Whitehall area was renamed West End in 1867 and is the oldest intact Victorian neighborhood of Atlanta.

In 1835, some leaders of the Cherokee Nation ceded their territory to the United States without the consent of the majority of the Cherokee people in exchange for land out west under the Treaty of New Echota, an act that led to the Trail of Tears.

From railroad terminus to Atlanta: 1836–1860
In 1836, the Georgia General Assembly voted to build the Western and Atlantic Railroad to provide a link between the port of Savannah and the Midwest. The initial route of that state-sponsored project was to run from Chattanooga, Tennessee, to a spot east of the Chattahoochee River, in present-day Fulton County. The plan was to eventually link up with the Georgia Railroad from Augusta, and with the Macon and Western Railroad, which ran between Macon and Savannah. A U.S. Army engineer, Colonel Stephen Harriman Long, was asked to recommend the location where the Western and Atlantic line would terminate. He surveyed various possible routes, then in the autumn of 1837, drove a stake into the ground between what are now Forsyth Street and Andrew Young International Boulevard, about three or four blocks northwest of today's Five Points. The zero milepost was later placed to mark that spot.

In 1839, John Thrasher built homes and a general store in this vicinity, and the settlement was nicknamed Thrasherville. A marker identifies the location of Thrasherville at 104 Marietta Street, NW, in front of the State Bar of Georgia Building, between Spring and Cone Streets. (33.75682°N, -84.39237°W) At this point, Thrasher built the Monroe Embankment, an earthen embankment to carry the Monroe Railway to meet the W&A at the terminus. This is the oldest existing man-made structure in downtown Atlanta.

In 1842, the planned terminus location was moved, four blocks southeast (two to three blocks southeast of Five Points), to what would become State Square, on Wall Street between Central Avenue and Pryor Street. (33.75235°N, -84.38862°W). At this location, the zero milepost can now be found, adjacent to the southern entrance of Underground Atlanta. As the settlement grew, it became known as Terminus, literally meaning "end of the line". By 1842, the settlement at Terminus had six buildings and 30 residents.

Meanwhile, settlement began at what became the Buckhead section of Atlanta, several miles north of today's downtown. In 1838, Henry Irby started a tavern and grocery at what became the intersection of Paces Ferry and Roswell Roads. In 1842, when a two-story brick depot was built, the locals asked that the settlement of Terminus be called Lumpkin, after Governor Wilson Lumpkin. Gov. Lumpkin asked them to name it after his young daughter (Martha Atalanta Lumpkin) instead, and Terminus became Marthasville; it was officially incorporated on December 23, 1843. In 1845, the chief engineer of the Georgia Railroad (J. Edgar Thomson) suggested that Marthasville be renamed "Atlantica-Pacifica", which was quickly shortened to "Atlanta". Wilson Lumpkin seems to have supported the change, reporting that Martha's middle name was Atalanta.

The residents approved the name change, apparently undaunted by the fact that not a single train had yet visited. Act 109 of the Georgia General Assembly enacted the name change, which was approved December 26, 1845, and signed into law 3 days afterward. In the same act, the election precinct known as the Whitehall precinct (in the home of Charner Humphries) was also changed to Atlanta. In 1847, the city's charter was approved, elections were held, and the first slate of councilmen and the mayor took office in January 1848.

"AN ACT to change the name of Marthasville, in DeKalb County, to that of Atlanta; also, to change the election precinct now held at the house of Charner Humphries, known as the Whitehall precinct, to Atlanta.

 * SECTION 1. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the State of Georgia, in General Assembly met, and it is hereby enacted by the authority of the same, That from and after the passage of this act, the name of Marthasville, in DeKalb county, shall be changed to that of Atlanta.
 * SEC. 2. And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, That the election precinct now established by law at the house of Charner Humphries, known as the Whitehall precinct, be and the same is hereby changed to Atlanta.
 * SEC. 3. And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, That all laws and parts of laws militating against this act, be and the same are hereby repealed.
 * Approved, December 26, 1845"

Growth and development into a regional rail hub
The first Georgia Railroad freight and passenger trains from Augusta (to the east of Atlanta), arrived in September 1845 and in that year the first hotel, the Atlanta Hotel, was opened. The railroad was the chief stimulus to the town's growth, with several lines being added.

In 1846, a second railroad company, the Macon & Western (orig. "Monroe Railroad"), completed tracks to Terminus/Atlanta, connecting the little settlement with Macon to the south and Savannah to the southeast. The town then began to boom. In late 1846, the Washington Hall hotel was opened. By 1847, the population had reached 2,500. In 1848, the town elected its first mayor and appointed its first town marshal, German M. Lester, coinciding with the first homicide and the first jail built. A new city council approved the building of wooden sidewalks and banned conducting business on Sundays. In 1849, Atlanta's third and largest antebellum hotel was built, the Trout House, and the Daily Intelligencer became the town's first successful daily newspaper. In 1850 Oakland Cemetery was founded southeast of town, where it remains today within the city limits.

In 1851, a third rail line, the Western and Atlantic Railroad - for which the site of Atlanta had been identified as a terminus - finally arrived, connecting Atlanta to Chattanooga in the northwest and opening up Georgia to trade with the Tennessee and Ohio River Valleys, and the American Midwest. The union depot was completed in 1853 on State Square. That year, the depot's architect, Edward A. Vincent, also delivered Atlanta's first official map to the city council.

Fulton County was established in 1853 from the western section of DeKalb, and in 1854, a combination Fulton County Court House and Atlanta City Hall was built– which would be razed 30 years later to make way for today's State Capitol building. (After the Civil War, the Georgia General Assembly decided to move the state capital from Milledgeville to Atlanta.)

In 1854, a fourth rail line, the Atlanta and LaGrange Rail Road (later Atlanta & West Point Railroad) arrived, connecting Atlanta with LaGrange, Georgia, to the southwest, sealing Atlanta's role as a rail hub for the entire South, with lines to the northwest, east, southeast, and southwest.

By 1855, the town had grown to 6,025 residents and had a bank, a daily newspaper, a factory to build freight cars, a new brick depot, property taxes, a gasworks, gas street lights, a theater, a medical college, and juvenile delinquency.

Manufacturing and commerce

The first true manufacturing establishment was opened in 1844, when Jonathan Norcross, who later became mayor of Atlanta, arrived in Marthasville and built a sawmill. Richard Peters, Lemuel Grant, and John Mims built a three-story flour mill, which was used as a pistol factory during the Civil War. In 1848, Austin Leyden started the town's first foundry and machine shop, which was later the Atlanta Machine Works.

The Atlanta Rolling Mill (later the "Confederate" Rolling Mill) was built in 1858 near Oakland Cemetery. It soon became the South's second-most productive rolling mill. During the American Civil War it rolled out cannon, iron rail, and 2 in sheets of iron to clad the CSS Virginia for the Confederate navy. The mill was destroyed by the Union Army in 1864.

The city became a busy center for cotton distribution. As an example, in 1859, the Georgia Railroad alone sent 3,000 empty rail cars to the city to be loaded with cotton.

By 1860, the city had four large machine shops, two planing mills, three tanneries, two shoe factories, a soap factory, and clothing factories employing 75 people.

Slavery in antebellum Atlanta
In 1850, out of 2,572 people, 493 were enslaved African Americans, and 18 were free blacks, for a total black population of 20%. The black proportion of Atlanta's population became much higher after the Civil War, when freed slaves came to Atlanta in search of opportunity.

Several slave auction houses were in the town, which advertised in the newspapers and many of which also traded in manufactured goods.

Civil War: 1861–1865
During the American Civil War, Atlanta served as an important railroad and military supply hub. (See also: Atlanta in the Civil War.) In 1864, the city became the target of a major Union invasion (the setting for the 1939 film Gone with the Wind). The area now covered by Atlanta was the scene of several battles, including the Battle of Peachtree Creek, the Battle of Atlanta, and the Battle of Ezra Church. General Sherman cut the last supply line to Atlanta at the Battle of Jonesboro fought on August 31 – September 1.

With all of his supply lines cut, Confederate General John Bell Hood was forced to abandon Atlanta. On the night of September 1, his troops marched out of the city to Lovejoy, Georgia. General Hood ordered that the 81 rail cars filled with ammunition and other military supplies be destroyed. The resulting fire and explosions were heard for miles. The next day, Mayor James Calhoun surrendered the city, and on September 7 Sherman ordered the civilian population to evacuate. He then ordered Atlanta burned to the ground on November 11 in preparation for his punitive march south.

After a plea by the Bishops of the Episcopal and Catholic churches in Atlanta, Sherman did not burn the city's churches or hospitals. The remaining war resources were then destroyed in the aftermath in Sherman's March to the Sea. The fall of Atlanta was a critical point in the Civil War. Its much publicized fall gave confidence to the Northerners. Together with the Battle of Mobile Bay, the fall of Atlanta led to the re-election of Abraham Lincoln and the eventual surrender of the Confederacy.

Reconstruction: 1865–1871
The city emerged from the ashes – hence the city's symbol, the phoenix – and was gradually rebuilt, as its population increased rapidly after the war. Atlanta received migrants from surrounding counties and states: from 1860 to 1870 Fulton County more than doubled in population, from 14,427 to 33,446. In a pattern seen across the South after the Civil War, many freedmen moved from plantations to towns or cities for work, including Atlanta; Fulton County went from 20.5% black in 1860 to 45.7% black in 1870.

Food supplies were erratic due to poor harvests, which were a result of the turmoil in the agricultural labor supply after emancipation of the slaves. Many refugees were destitute without even proper clothing or shoes; the AMA helped fill the gap with food, shelter, and clothing, and the federally sponsored Freedmen's Bureau also offered much help, though erratically.

The destruction of the housing stock by the Union army, together with the massive influx of refugees, resulted in a severe housing shortage. Some 1/8 acre to 1/4 acre lots with a small house rented for $5 per month, while those with a glass pane rented for $20. High rents rather than laws led to de facto segregation, with most black people settling in three shantytown areas at the city's edge. There, housing was substandard; an AMA missionary remarked that many houses were "rickety shacks" rented at inflated rates. Two of the three shantytowns sat in low-lying areas, prone to flooding and sewage overflows, which resulted in outbreaks of disease in the late 19th century. A shantytown named Tight Squeeze developed at Peachtree at what is now 10th Street in Midtown Atlanta. It was infamous for vagrancy, desperation, and robberies of merchants transiting the settlement.

A smallpox epidemic hit Atlanta in December 1865, with few doctors or hospital facilities to help. Another epidemic hit in fall, 1866; hundreds died.

Construction created many new jobs, and employment boomed. Atlanta soon became the industrial and commercial center of the South. From 1867 until 1888, U.S. Army soldiers occupied McPherson Barracks (later renamed Fort McPherson) in southwest Atlanta to ensure Reconstruction-era reforms. In 1868, Atlanta became the Georgia state capital, taking over from Milledgeville.

Center of black education
Atlanta quickly became a center of black education. Atlanta University was established in 1865, the forerunner of Morehouse College in 1867, Clark University in 1869, Spelman College in 1881, and Morris Brown College in 1881. This was one of several factors aiding the establishment of one of the nation's oldest and best-established African-American elite in Atlanta.

The New South
Henry W. Grady, the editor of the Atlanta Constitution, promoted the city to investors as a city of the "New South", by which he meant a diversification of the economy away from agriculture, and a shift from the "Old South" attitudes of slavery and rebellion. As part of the effort to modernize the South, Grady and many others also supported the creation of the Georgia School of Technology (now the Georgia Institute of Technology), which was founded on the city's northern outskirts in 1885. With Grady's support, the Confederate Soldiers' Home was built in 1889.

In 1880, Sister Cecilia Carroll, RSM, and three companions traveled from Savannah, Georgia to Atlanta to minister to the sick. With just 50 cents in their collective purse, the sisters opened the Atlanta Hospital, the first medical facility in the city after the Civil War. This later became known as Saint Joseph's Hospital.

Expansion and the first planned suburbs

Starting in 1871, horse-drawn, and later, starting in 1888, electric streetcars fueled real estate development and the city's expansion. Washington Street south of downtown and Peachtree Street north of the central business district became wealthy residential areas.

In the 1890s, West End became the suburb of choice for the city's elite, but Inman Park, planned as a harmonious whole, soon overtook it in prestige. Peachtree Street's mansions reached ever further north into what is now Midtown Atlanta, including Amos G. Rhodes' (founder of the Rhodes Furniture Company in 1875) mansion, Rhodes Hall, which can still be visited.

Atlanta surpassed Savannah as Georgia's largest city by 1880.

Disenfranchisement of black people
As Atlanta grew, ethnic and racial tensions mounted. Late 19th- and early 20th-century immigration added a very small number of new Europeans to the mix. After Reconstruction, whites had used a variety of tactics, including militias and legislation, to re-establish political and social supremacy throughout the South. Starting with a poll tax in 1877, by the turn of the century, Georgia passed a variety of legislation that completed the disfranchisement of black people. Not even college-educated men could vote. Nonetheless, African Americans in Atlanta had been developing their own businesses, institutions, churches, and a strong, educated middle class. Meanwhile, the 2nd Ku Klux Klan era, (1915–1944) headed by William J. Simmons, and the 3rd Ku Klux Klan era, (1946–present) headed by Dr. Samuel Green, both started off in Atlanta.

Coca-Cola
The identities of Atlanta and Coca-Cola have been intertwined since 1886, when John Pemberton developed the soft drink in response to Atlanta and Fulton County going "dry". The first sales were at Jacob's Pharmacy in Atlanta. Asa Griggs Candler acquired a stake in Pemberton's company in 1887 and incorporated it as the Coca Cola Company in 1888. In 1892, Candler incorporated a second company, The Coca-Cola Company, the current corporation. By the time of its 50th anniversary, the drink had reached the status of a national icon in the USA. Coca-Cola's world headquarters have remained in Atlanta ever since. In 1991, the company opened the World of Coca-Cola, which has remained one of the city's top visitor attractions.

Cotton States Expo and Booker T. Washington speech
In 1895, the Cotton States and International Exposition was held at what is now Piedmont Park. Nearly 800,000 visitors attended the event. The exposition was designed to promote the region to the world and showcase products and new technologies, as well as to encourage trade with Latin America. The exposition featured exhibits from several states, including various innovations in agriculture and technology. President Grover Cleveland presided over the opening of the exposition, but the event is best remembered for the both hailed and criticized "Atlanta Compromise" speech given by Booker T. Washington in which Southern black people would work meekly and submit to white political rule, while Southern whites guaranteed that black people would receive basic education and due process in law.

1906 race riot

Competition between working-class whites and black for jobs and housing gave rise to fears and tensions. In 1906, print media fueled these tensions with hearsay about alleged sexual assaults on white women by Black men, triggering the 1906 Atlanta race riot, which left at least 27 people dead (25 of them black) and over 70 injured. Many Black businesses were destroyed.

Rise of Sweet Auburn
Black businesses started to move from the previously integrated business district downtown to the relative safety of the area around the Atlanta University Center west of downtown, and to Auburn Avenue in the Fourth Ward east of downtown. "Sweet" Auburn Avenue became home to Alonzo Herndon's Atlanta Mutual, the city's first black-owned life insurance company, and to a celebrated concentration of black businesses, newspapers, churches, and nightclubs. In 1956, Fortune magazine called Sweet Auburn "the richest Negro street in the world", a phrase originally coined by civil-rights leader John Wesley Dobbs. Sweet Auburn and Atlanta's elite black colleges formed the nexus of a prosperous black middle class and upper class, which arose despite enormous social and legal obstacles.

Jim Crow laws
Jim Crow laws were passed in swift succession in the years after the riot. The result was in some cases segregated facilities, with nearly always inferior conditions for black customers. In many cases it resulted in no facilities at all available to black people, e.g. all parks were designated whites-only (although a private park, Joyland, opened in 1921). In 1910, the city council passed an ordinance requiring that restaurants be designated for one race only, hobbling black restaurant owners who had been attracting both black and white customers.

In the same year, Atlanta's streetcars were segregated, with black patrons required to sit in the rear. If not enough seats were available for all white riders, the black people sitting furthest forward in the trolley were required to stand and give their seats to whites. In 1913, the city created official boundaries for white and black residential areas. In 1920, the city prohibited black-owned salons from serving white women and children.

Beyond this, black people were subject to the South's "racial protocol", whereby, according to the New Georgia Encyclopedia:

"[A]ll blacks were required to pay obeisance to all whites, even those whites of low social standing. And although they were required to address whites by the title 'sir,' blacks rarely received the same courtesy themselves. Because even minor breaches of racial etiquette often resulted in violent reprisals, the region's codes of deference transformed daily life into a theater of ritual, where every encounter, exchange, and gesture reinforced black inferiority."

In 1913, Leo Frank, a Jewish supervisor at a factory in Atlanta, was put on trial for raping and murdering a 13-year-old white employee from Marietta, a suburb of Atlanta. After doubts about Frank's guilt led his death sentence to be commuted in 1915, riots broke out in Atlanta among whites. They kidnapped Frank from the State Prison Farm in the city of Milledgeville, with the collusion of prison guards, and took him to Marietta, where he was lynched. Later that year, the Klan was reborn in Atlanta.

Country music scene
Many Appalachian people came to Atlanta to work in the cotton mills and brought their music with them. Starting with a 1913 fiddler's convention, Atlanta became the center of a thriving country-music scene. Atlanta was an important center for country music recording and talent recruiting in the 1920s and 1930s, and a live music center for an additional two decades after that.

Growth
In 1914, Asa Griggs Candler, the founder of The Coca-Cola Company and brother to former Emory President Warren Candler, persuaded the Methodist Episcopal Church South to build the new campus of Emory University in the emerging affluent suburb of Druid Hills, which borders northeastern Atlanta.

In 1916, Candler was elected mayor of Atlanta (taking office in 1917). As mayor he balanced the city budget and coordinated rebuilding efforts after the Great Atlanta fire of 1917 destroyed 1,500 homes. He also made large personal loans in order to develop the water and sewage facilities of the city of Atlanta, in order to provide the infrastructure necessary to a modern city.

Candler was also a philanthropist, endowing numerous schools and universities (he gave a total of $7 million to Emory University, ) and the Candler Hospital in Savannah, Georgia. Candler had paid to relocate Emory University from Oxford, Georgia, to Atlanta.

Great Atlanta Fire of 1917

On May 21, 1917, the Great Atlanta Fire destroyed 1,938 buildings, mostly wooden, in what is now the Old Fourth Ward. The fire resulted in 10,000 people becoming homeless. Only one person died, a woman who died of a heart attack when seeing her home in ashes.

In the 1930s, the Great Depression hit Atlanta. With the city government nearing bankruptcy, the Coca-Cola Company had to help bail out the city's deficit. The federal government stepped in to help Atlantans by establishing Techwood Homes, the nation's first federal housing project in 1935.

On the political scene, between March and May 1930, the police arrested six communist leaders, who became known as the Atlanta Six, under a restoration-era insurrection statute. These leaders were Morris H. Powers, Joseph Carr, Mary Dalton, Ann Burlak, Herbert Newton, and Henry Storey. During the summer of 1930, approximately 150 Atlanta business leaders, American Legion members, and members of law enforcement founded the American Fascisti Association and Order of the Black Shirts with the goal to "foster the principles of white supremacy".

In 1932, the city began to deny the Black Shirts permits for parades and charters. In 1932, Angelo Herndon was arrested and charged under the insurrection statute for being in possession of communist literature. Herndon's defense team, including attorney Benjamin J. Davis Jr., countered that by systemically excluding Black Americans from the jury pool, the criminal justice system was violating Herndon's civil rights, making the verdict invalid. The defense team appealed the decision to the Supreme Court twice and secured a decision against the insurrection statute in 1937.

Gone with the Wind premiere
On December 15, 1939, Atlanta hosted the premiere of Gone with the Wind, the movie based on Atlanta resident Margaret Mitchell's best-selling novel. Stars Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, and Olivia de Havilland were in attendance. The premiere was held at Loew's Grand Theatre, at Peachtree and Forsyth Streets, current site of the Georgia-Pacific building. An enormous crowd, numbering 300,000 people according to the Atlanta Constitution, filled the streets on an ice-cold night in Atlanta. A rousing ovation greeted a group of Confederate veterans who were guests of honor.

Absence of film's black stars at event
Noticeably absent was Hattie McDaniel, who won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Mammy, as well as Butterfly McQueen (Prissy). The black actors were barred from attending the premiere, from appearing in the souvenir program, and from all the film's advertising in the South. Director David Selznick had attempted to bring McDaniel to the premiere, but MGM advised him not to do so. Clark Gable angrily threatened to boycott the premiere, but McDaniel convinced him to attend, anyway. McDaniel did attend the Hollywood debut thirteen days later, and was featured prominently in the program.

Controversial participation of Martin Luther King Sr.
Martin Luther King Jr. sang at the gala as part of a children's choir of his father's church, Ebenezer Baptist. The boys dressed as pickaninnies and the girls wore "Aunt Jemima"-style bandanas, the dress seen by many black people as humiliating. John Wesley Dobbs tried to dissuade Rev. Martin Luther King Sr., from participating at the whites-only event, and Rev. King was harshly criticized in the black community.

Transportation hub
In 1941, Delta Air Lines moved its headquarters to Atlanta. Delta became the world's largest airline in 2008 after acquiring Northwest Airlines.

World War II
With the entry of the United States into World War II, soldiers from around the Southeastern United States went through Atlanta to train and later be discharged at Fort McPherson. War-related manufacturing such as the Bell Aircraft factory in the suburb of Marietta helped boost the city's population and economy. Shortly after the war in 1946, the Communicable Disease Center, later called the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was founded in Atlanta from the old Malaria Control in War Areas offices and staff.

Suburbanization and Civil Rights: 1946–1989
In 1951, the city received the All-America City Award due to its rapid growth and high standard of living in the southern U.S.

Annexation was the central strategy for growth. In 1952, Atlanta annexed Buckhead as well as vast areas of what are now northwest, southwest, and south Atlanta, adding 82 mi2 and tripling its area. By doing so, 100,000 new affluent white residents were added, preserving white political power, expanding the city's property tax base, and enlarging the traditional white upper middle class leadership. This class now had room to expand inside the city limits.

Federal court decisions in 1962 and 1963 ended the county-unit system, thus greatly reducing rural Georgia control over the state legislature, enabling Atlanta and other cities to gain proportional political power. The federal courts opened the Democratic Party primary to black voters, who surged in numbers and became increasingly well organized through the Atlanta Negro Voters League.

Blockbusting and racial transition in neighborhoods
In the late 1950s, after forced-housing patterns were outlawed, violence, intimidation, and organized political pressure were used in some white neighborhoods to discourage black people from buying homes there. However, by the late 1950s, such efforts proved futile as blockbusting drove whites to sell their homes in neighborhoods such as Adamsville, Center Hill, Grove Park in northwest Atlanta, and white sections of Edgewood and Kirkwood on the east side. In 1961, the city attempted to thwart blockbusting by erecting road barriers in Cascade Heights, countering the efforts of civic and business leaders to foster Atlanta as the "city too busy to hate".

Efforts to stop transition in Cascade failed too. Neighborhoods of new black homeowners took root, helping alleviate the enormous strain of the lack of housing available to African Americans. Atlanta's western and southern neighborhoods transitioned to majority black — between 1960 and 1970 the number of census tracts that were at least 90% black, tripled. East Lake, Kirkwood, Watts Road, Reynoldstown, Almond Park, Mozley Park, Center Hill, and Cascade Heights underwent an almost total transition from white to black. The black proportion of the city's population rose from 38 to 51%. Meanwhile, during the same decade, the city lost 60,000 white residents, a 20% decline.

White flight and the building of malls in the suburbs triggered a slow decline of the central business district. Meanwhile, conservatism grew rapidly in the suburbs, and white Georgians were increasingly willing to vote for Republicans, most notably Newt Gingrich.

Civil Rights Movement
In the wake of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education, which helped usher in the Civil Rights Movement, racial tensions in Atlanta erupted in acts of violence. One such instance occurred on October 12, 1958, when a Reform Jewish temple on Peachtree Street was bombed. A group of white supremacists calling themselves the "Confederate Underground" claimed responsibility. The temple's leader, Rabbi Jacob Rothschild, actively spoke out in support of the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement and against segregation, which is likely why the congregation was targeted.

In January 1956, Bobby Grier became the first black player to participate in the Sugar Bowl. He is also regarded as the first black player to compete at a bowl game in the Deep South, though others such as Wallace Triplett had played in games like the 1948 Cotton Bowl in Dallas. Grier's team, the Pittsburgh Panthers, was set to play against the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets. However, Georgia's Governor Marvin Griffin beseeched Georgia Tech's president Blake Van Leer and its players to not participate in this racially integrated game. Griffin was widely criticized by news media leading up to the game, and protests were held at his mansion by Georgia Tech students. After delivering a commencement speech at the all-Black Morris Brown College, Van Leer was summoned by the board of regents where he was quoted "Either we're going to the Sugar Bowl or you can find yourself another damn president of Georgia Tech.". Despite the governor's objections, Georgia Tech upheld the contract and proceeded to compete in the bowl. In the game's first quarter, a pass interference call against Grier ultimately resulted in Yellow Jackets' 7-0 victory. Grier stated that he has mostly positive memories about the experience, including the support from teammates and letters from all over the world.

In the 1960s, Atlanta was a major organizing center of the Civil Rights Movement, with Martin Luther King Jr., and students from Atlanta's historically black colleges and universities playing major roles in the movement's leadership. On October 19, 1960, a sit-in at the lunch counters of several Atlanta department stores led to the arrest of Dr. King and several students. This drew attention from the national media and from presidential candidate John F. Kennedy.

Despite this incident, Atlanta's political and business leaders fostered Atlanta's image as "the city too busy to hate". While the city mostly avoided confrontation, minor race riots did occur in 1965 and 1968.

Desegregation
Desegregation of the public sphere came in stages, with buses and trolleybuses desegregated in 1959, restaurants at Rich's department store in 1961, (though Lester Maddox's Pickrick restaurant famously remained segregated through 1964), and movie theaters in 1962–3. While in 1961, Mayor Ivan Allen Jr. became one of the few Southern white mayors to support desegregation of his city's public schools, initial compliance was token, and in reality desegregation occurred in stages from 1961 to 1973.

1962 air crash and influence on art scene
In 1962, Atlanta in general and its arts community in particular were shaken by the deaths of 106 people on Air France charter flight 007, which crashed. The Atlanta Art Association had sponsored a month-long tour of the art treasures of Europe. 106 of the tour members were heading home to Atlanta on the flight. The group included many of Atlanta's cultural and civic leaders. Atlanta mayor Ivan Allen Jr. went to Orly, France, to inspect the crash site where so many important Atlantans perished. The loss was a catalyst for the arts in Atlanta and helped create the Woodruff Arts Center, originally called the Memorial Arts Center, as a tribute to the victims, and led to the creation of the Atlanta Arts Alliance. The French government donated a Rodin sculpture, The Shade, to the High in memory of the victims of the crash.

The crash occurred during the Civil Rights Movement and affected it, as well. Martin Luther King Jr., and Harry Belafonte announced cancellation of a sit-in in downtown Atlanta as a conciliatory gesture to the grieving city, while Nation of Islam leader Malcolm X gained widespread national attention for the first time by expressing joy over the deaths of the all-white group.

Freeway construction and revolts
Atlanta's freeway system was completed in the 1950s and 1960s, with the Perimeter completed in 1969. Historic neighborhoods such as Washington-Rawson and Copenhill were damaged or destroyed in the process. Additional proposed freeways were never built due to the protests of city residents. The opposition lasted three decades, with then-governor Jimmy Carter playing a key role in stopping I-485 through Morningside and Virginia Highland to Inman Park in 1973, but pushing hard in the 1980s for a "Presidential Parkway" between downtown, the new Carter Center, and Druid Hills/Emory.

Urban renewal
In the 1960s, slums such as Buttermilk Bottom near today's Civic Center were razed, in principle to build better housing, but much of the land remained empty until the 1980s, when mixed-income communities were built in what was renamed Bedford Pine. The African-American community east of downtown suffered as the center of the black economy moved squarely to southwestern Atlanta. During the 1960s, African-American citizens'-rights groups such as U-Rescue emerged to address the lack of housing for poor black people.

Shoppers move to new malls as Downtown gains new roles
The first major mall built in Atlanta was Lenox Square in Buckhead, opening in August 1959. From 1964 until 1973, nine major malls opened, most at the Perimeter freeway: Cobb Center in 1963, Columbia Mall in 1964, North DeKalb and Greenbriar malls in 1965, South DeKalb Mall in 1968, Phipps Plaza (near Lenox Square) in 1969, Perimeter and Northlake malls in 1971, and Cumberland Mall in 1973. Downtown Atlanta became less and less a shopping destination for the area's shoppers. Rich's closed its flagship store downtown in 1991, leaving government offices the major presence in the South Downtown area around it.

On the north side of Five Points, Downtown continued as the largest concentration of office space in Metro Atlanta, though it began to compete with Midtown, Buckhead, and the suburbs. The first four towers of Peachtree Center were built in 1965–1967, including the Hyatt Regency Atlanta, designed by John Portman, with its 22-story atrium. In total, 17 buildings of more than 15n floors were built in the 1960s. The center of gravity of Downtown Atlanta correspondingly moved north from the Five Points area towards Peachtree Center.

Atlanta's convention and hotel facilities also grew immensely. John C. Portman Jr. designed and opened what is now the AmericasMart merchandise mart in 1958; the Sheraton Atlanta, the city's first convention hotel, was built in the 1960s; the Atlanta Hilton opened in 1971; as did two Portman-designed hotels: the Peachtree Plaza Hotel now owned by Westin in 1976, and the Marriott in 1985. The Omni Coliseum opened in 1976, as did the Georgia World Congress Center (GWCC). The GWCC expanded multiple times in succeeding decades and helped make Atlanta one of the country's top convention cities.

Black political power and Mayor Jackson
In 1960, whites comprised 61.7% of the city's population. African Americans became a majority in the city by 1970, and exercised new-found political influence by electing Atlanta's first black mayor, Maynard Jackson, in 1973. In 1974, the Board of Aldermen was officially overhauled into the Atlanta City Council.

During Jackson's first term as mayor, much progress was made in improving race relations in and around Atlanta, and Atlanta acquired the motto "A City Too Busy to Hate". As mayor, he led the beginnings and much of the progress on several huge public-works projects in Atlanta and its region. He helped arrange for the rebuilding of the airport's huge terminal to modern standards, and this airport was renamed the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in his honor shortly after his death, also named after him is the new Maynard Holbrook Jackson Jr. International Terminal which opened in May 2012. He also fought against the construction of freeways through intown neighborhoods.

Construction of MARTA rail system
In 1965, an act of the Georgia General Assembly created the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority, or MARTA, which was to provide rapid transit for the five largest metropolitan counties: DeKalb, Fulton, Clayton, Gwinnett, and Cobb, but a referendum authorizing participation in the system failed in Cobb County. A 1968 referendum to fund MARTA failed, but in 1971, Fulton and DeKalb Counties passed a 1% sales tax increase to pay for operations, while Clayton and Gwinnett counties overwhelmingly rejected the tax in referendum, fearing the introduction of crime and "undesirable elements". In 1972, the agency bought the existing, bus-only Atlanta Transit Company.

Construction began on the new rail system in 1975. Service started in June 1979, running east–west from Georgia State University downtown to Avondale. The Five Points downtown hub opened later that year. A short north–south line opened in 1981, which by 1984 had been extended to reach from Brookhaven to Lakewood/Fort McPherson. In 1988, the line was extended to a station inside the airport terminal. A line originally envisioned to run to Emory University is still under consideration.

Child murders
Atlanta was rocked by a series of murders of children from the summer of 1979 until the spring of 1981. Over the two-year period, at least 22 children, and 6 adults were killed, all of them black. Atlanta native Wayne Williams, also black and 23 years old at the time of the last murder, was convicted of two of the murders and sent to prison for life. The rest of the crimes remain unsolved today.

Mayor Andrew Young
In 1981, after being urged by a number of people, including Coretta Scott King, the widow of Martin Luther King Jr., Democratic Congressman Andrew Young ran for mayor of Atlanta. He was elected later that year with 55% of the vote, succeeding Maynard Jackson. As mayor of Atlanta, he brought in $70 billion of new private investment. He continued and expanded Maynard Jackson's programs for including minority and female-owned businesses in all city contracts.

The Mayor's Task Force on Education established the Dream Jamboree College Fair that tripled the college scholarships given to Atlanta public school graduates. In 1985, he was involved in privatizing the Atlanta Zoo, which was renamed Zoo Atlanta. The then-moribund zoo was overhauled, making ecological habitats specific to different animals.

Young was re-elected as Mayor in 1985 with more than 80% of the vote. Atlanta hosted the 1988 Democratic National Convention during Young's tenure. He was prohibited by term limits from running for a third term. He was succeeded by Maynard Jackson who returned as mayor from 1990 to 1994. Bill Campbell succeeded Jackson as mayor in 1994 and served through 2002.

Campbell mayorship and failure of Atlanta Empowerment Zone
In November 1994, the Atlanta Empowerment Zone was established, a 10-year, $250 million federal program to revitalize Atlanta's 34 poorest neighborhoods including The Bluff. Scathing reports from both the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Georgia Department of Community Affairs revealed corruption, waste, bureaucratic incompetence, and specifically called out interference by mayor Bill Campbell.

In 1993-1996 about 250,000 people attended Freaknik, an annual Spring Break gathering for African Americans which was not centrally organized and which resulted in much traffic gridlock and increased crime. After a 1996 crackdown annual attendance dissipated and the event moved to other cities.

1996 Summer Olympics

In 1990, the International Olympic Committee selected Atlanta as the site for the 1996 Summer Olympics. Following the announcement, Atlanta undertook several major construction projects to improve the city's parks, sports facilities, and transportation, including the completion of long-contested Freedom Parkway. Former Mayor Bill Campbell allowed many "tent cities" to be built, creating a carnival atmosphere around the games. Atlanta became the third American city to host the Summer Olympics, after St. Louis (1904 Summer Olympics) and Los Angeles (1932, 1984, and 2028).

The games themselves were notable in the realm of sporting events, but they were marred by numerous organizational inefficiencies. A dramatic event was the Centennial Olympic Park bombing, in which two people died, one from a heart attack, and several others were injured. Eric Robert Rudolph was later convicted of the bombing as an anti-government and pro-life protest.

Shirley Franklin mayorship
Shirley Franklin's 2001 run for mayor was her first run for public office. She won, succeeding Mayor Bill Campbell after winning 50 percent of the vote. Facing a massive and unexpected budget deficit, Franklin slashed the number of government employees and increased taxes to balance the budget as quickly as possible.

Franklin made repairing the Atlanta sewer system a main focus of her office. Prior to Franklin's term, Atlanta's combined sewer system violated the federal Clean Water Act and burdened the city government with fines from the Environmental Protection Agency. In 2002, Franklin announced an initiative called "Clean Water Atlanta" to address the problem and begin improving the city's sewer system.

She has been lauded for efforts to make the City of Atlanta "green". Under Franklin's leadership Atlanta has gone from having one of the lowest percentages of LEED certified buildings to one of the highest.

In 2005, Time magazine named Franklin of the five best big-city American mayors. In October of that same year, she was included in the U.S. News & World Report "Best Leaders of 2005" issue. With solid popular support and strong backing from the business sector, Franklin was reelected mayor in 2005, garnering more than 90 percent of the vote.

2008 tornado
On March 14, 2008, a tornado ripped through downtown Atlanta, the first since weather has been recorded in 1880. There was minor damage to many downtown skyscrapers. However, two holes were torn into the roof of the Georgia Dome, tearing down catwalks and the scoreboard as debris rained onto the court in the middle of an SEC game. The Omni Hotel suffered major damage, along with Centennial Olympic Park and the Georgia World Congress Center. Fulton Bag and Cotton Mills and Oakland Cemetery were also damaged.

BeltLine
In 2005, the $2.8 billion BeltLine project was adopted, with the stated goals of converting a disused 22-mile freight railroad loop that surrounds the central city into an art-filled multi-use trail and increasing the city's park space by 40%.

Gentrification
Since 2000, Atlanta has undergone a profound transformation culturally, demographically, and physically. Much of the city's change during the decade was driven by young, college-educated professionals: from 2000 to 2009, the three-mile radius surrounding Downtown Atlanta gained 9,722 residents aged 25 to 34 holding at least a four-year degree, an increase of 61%. Meanwhile, as gentrification spread throughout the city, Atlanta's cultural offerings expanded: the High Museum of Art doubled in size; the Alliance Theatre won a Tony Award; and numerous art galleries were established on the once-industrial Westside.

Racial transition
The black population in the Atlanta area rapidly suburbanized in the 1990s and 2000s. From 2000 to 2010, the city of Atlanta's black population shrunk by 31,678 people, dropping from 61.4% to 54.0% of the population. While black people exited the city and DeKalb County, the black population increased sharply in other areas of Metro Atlanta by 93.1%. During the same period, the proportion of whites in the city's population grew dramatically - faster than that of any other major U.S. city between 2000 and 2006.

Between 2000 and 2010, Atlanta added 22,763 whites, and the white proportion of the population increased from 31% to 38%. In 2009, a white mayoral candidate, Mary Norwood, lost by just 714 votes, out of over 84,000 cast, to Kasim Reed. This represented a historic change from the perception until that time that Atlanta was "guaranteed" to elect a black mayor. Other areas, like Marietta and Alpharetta, are seeing similar demographic changes, with huge increases of middle and upper income black people and Asian people—mostly former residents of Atlanta.

Recent events
In 2009, the Atlanta Public Schools cheating scandal began, which ABC News called the "worst in the country", resulting in the 2013 indictment of superintendent Beverly Hall.

Starting in October 2011, Occupy Atlanta staged demonstrations against banks and AT&T to protest alleged greed by those companies.

Significantly, in March 2020, Atlanta went to the national lockdown and social economic problems, where the city was impacted by COVID-19 pandemic. Following the approval of the first COVID-19 vaccines in Georgia, free and voluntary vaccination against the disease began in the city on December 14, 2020. However, many COVID-19 restrictions in the city were lifted up by June 2021.

In late May 2020 following George Floyd's murder, protests that developed into riots and looting occurred across Atlanta; mainly in the Downtown and Buckhead neighborhoods. Notable buildings and museums such as The CNN Center and The College Football Hall of Fame were vandalized.

In 2021, a series of mass shootings struck massage parlors in Atlanta and the surrounding area. Eight people were killed and a ninth person was wounded. A suspect was arrested on the same day as the incidents in Crisp County, south of Atlanta.

In 2021, a police training center that critics have called Cop City became controversial. The controversy attracted international attention after a protestor, Manuel Esteban Paez Teran was killed by police in January 2023.

City directories online

Published in the 20th century
 * 1904, 1908

title: History of Atlanta


text:
Philoxenus of Mabbug

Philoxenus of Mabbug (Syriac: ܐܟܣܢܝܐ ܡܒܘܓܝܐ, Aksenāyâ Mabûḡāyâ) (died 523), also known as Xenaias and Philoxenus of Hierapolis, was one of the most notable Syriac prose writers during the Byzantine period and a vehement champion of Miaphysitism.

Early life
He was born, probably in the third quarter of the 5th century, at Tahal, a village in the district of Beth Garmaï east of the Tigris. He was by birth a subject of Persia, but all his active life of which we have any record was passed in the territory of the Byzantine Empire. His parents were from the Median city of Ecbatana. The statements that he had been a slave and was never baptized appear to be malicious inventions of his theological opponents following his death. He was educated at Edessa, perhaps in the famous "school of the Persians," which was afterwards (in 489) expelled from Edessa on account of its connection with Nestorianism. His anaphora is linked to the anaphora of Mar Addai and Mar Mari. Furthermore, he comes from the East Syriac Rite (which did not differ much at the time), and introduced elements of such into the West Syriac Rite.

Background
The years which followed the Council of Chalcedon (451) were a stormy period in the Syriac Church. Philoxenus soon attracted notice by his strenuous advocacy of Miaphysitism.

When Calandio, the Chalcedonian patriarch of Antioch, was expelled by the Miaphysite Peter the Fuller in 485, Philoxenus was ordained bishop of Mabbug. It was probably during the earlier years of his episcopate that Philoxenus composed his thirteen homilies on the Christian life.

Syriac Bible
Later he devoted himself to the revision of the Syriac versions of the Bible, and with the help of his chorbishop Polycarp produced in 508 the so-called Philoxenian version, which was in some sense the received Bible of the Syriac Miaphysites during the 6th century. In the meantime he continued his ecclesiastical activity, working as a bitter opponent of Flavian II, who was patriarch of Antioch from 498 to 512 and accepted the decrees of the Council of Chalcedon.

With the support of Emperor Anastasius, the Miaphysites ousted Flavian in 512 and replaced him with their partisan Severus. Of Philoxenus's part in the struggle we possess not too trustworthy accounts by hostile writers, such as Theophanes the Confessor and Theodorus Lector. We know that in 498 he was staying at Edessa; in or about 507, according to Theophanes, he was summoned by the emperor to Constantinople; and he finally presided at a synod at Sidon which was the means of procuring the replacement of Flavian by Severus. But the triumph was short-lived. Justin I, who succeeded Anastasius in 518 and adhered to the Chalcedonian creed, exiled Severus and Philoxenus in 519. Philoxenus was banished to Philippopolis in Thrace, and afterwards to Gangra in Paphlagonia, where he was murdered in 523.

Writings
Apart from his redoubtable powers as a controversialist, Philoxenus is remembered as a scholar, an elegant writer, and an exponent of practical Christianity. Of the chief monument of his scholarship – the Philoxenian version of the Bible – only the Gospels and certain portions of Isaiah are known to survive (see Wright, Syr. Lit. 14). It was an attempt to provide a more accurate rendering of the Septuagint than had hitherto existed in Syriac, and obtained recognition among Syriac Miaphysites until superseded by the still more literal renderings of the Old Testament by Paul of Tella and of the New Testament by Thomas of Harkel (both in 616/617), of which the latter at least was based on the work of Philoxenus.

There are also extant portions of commentaries on the Gospels from his pen. Of the excellence of his style and of his practical religious zeal we are able to judge from the thirteen homilies on the Christian life and character which have been edited and translated by E. A. Wallis Budge (London, 1894). In these he holds aloof for the most part from theological controversy, and treats in an admirable tone and spirit the themes of faith, simplicity, the fear of God, poverty, greed, abstinence and unchastity. His affinity with his earlier countryman Aphraates is manifest both in his choice of subjects and his manner of treatment. As his quotations from Scripture appear to be made from the Peshitta, he probably wrote the homilies before he embarked upon the Philoxenian version. Philoxenus wrote also many controversial works and some liturgical pieces. Many of his letters survive, and at least two have been edited. Several of his writings were translated into Arabic and Ethiopic.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Philoxenus of Mabbug


text:
Christ's College

Christ's College is a name shared by several educational establishments. Among them are:

 * Christ's College, Aberdeen, in Scotland
 * Christ's College, Cambridge, one of the constituent Colleges of the University of Cambridge, England
 * Christ's College of Education, a mixed Catholic teacher training college established 1964 in Liverpool, England, now a constituent of Liverpool Hope University
 * Christ's College, Christchurch, an independent (private) Anglican boys' secondary school in Christchurch, New Zealand
 * Christ's College, Finchley, a secondary school in London, England
 * Christ's College, Guildford, a secondary school in southern England

title: Christ's College


text:
Miguel Primo de Rivera

Miguel Primo de Rivera y Orbaneja, 2nd Marquis of Estella, GE (8 January 1870 – 16 March 1930), was a Spanish dictator and military officer who ruled as prime minister of Spain from 1923 to 1930 during the last years of the Bourbon Restoration.

He was born into a landowning family of Andalusian aristocrats. He met his baptism by fire in October 1893 in Cabrerizas Altas during the so-called Margallo War. He moved up the military ladder, promoted to brigadier general (1911), division general (1914), and lieutenant general (1919). He went on to serve as administrator of the Valencia, Madrid, and Barcelona military regions, distinguishing himself as a voice in favour of military withdrawal from Africa.

During the crisis of the Restoration regime, specifically upon political turmoil in the wake of setbacks in the Rif War and the ensuing spillover of the enquiries of the Picasso file, Primo de Rivera staged a military coup d'état on 13 September 1923 with help from a clique of Africanist generals close to King Alfonso XIII. The coup enjoyed the acquiescence of the monarch, and Primo de Rivera was ensuingly tasked to form a government. He thereby proceeded to suspend the 1876 constitution and establish martial law.

His dictatorial rule was marked by authoritarian nationalism and populism. Primo de Rivera initially said he would rule for only 90 days; however, he chose to remain in power, heading a military directorate. In December 1925, after the Alhucemas landing ended Rifian anti-colonial resistance, he installed a civil directory. From 1927 a policy of public spending on infrastructures was pursued and state monopolies such as oil company Campsa were created. Once economic tailwinds diminished, he lost the support of most of his generals, and he was forced to resign in January 1930 amid increasing inflation and civic unrest, dying abroad two months later.

Some of his children, such as José Antonio and Pilar, went on to become fascist leaders.

Early years
Miguel Primo de Rivera was born into a landowning military family of Jerez de la Frontera. His father was a retired colonel. His uncle, Fernando, was Captain General in Madrid and the soon-to-be first Marquis of Estella. Fernando later participated in the plot to restore the constitutional monarchy in 1875, ending the tumultuous First Republic. His great-grandfather was Bértrand Primo de Rivera (1741–1813), a general and hero of the Spanish Resistance against Napoleon Bonaparte.

The young Miguel grew up as part of what Gerald Brenan called "a hard-drinking, whoring, horse-loving aristocracy" that ruled "over the most starved and down-trodden race of agricultural labourers in Europe." Studying history and engineering before deciding upon a military career, he won admission to the newly created General Military Academy in Toledo, and graduated in 1884.

Military career
His army career gave him a role as junior officer in the colonial wars in Morocco, Cuba and the Philippines. He then held several important military posts including the captain-generalship of Valencia, Madrid and Barcelona.

He showed courage and initiative in battles against the Berbers of the Rif region in northern Morocco, and promotions and decorations came steadily. Primo de Rivera became convinced that Spain probably could not hold on to its North African colony. For many years, the government had tried without success to crush the Berber rebels, wasting lives and money. He concluded Spain must withdraw from what was called Spanish Morocco if it could not dominate the colony. He was familiar with Cuba and the Philippines with the latter as an aide-de-camp during the Philippine Revolution against Emilio Aguinaldo and became a hostage along with Filipino exiles in Hong Kong after the Pact of Biak na Bato. in 1898 he watched the humiliating defeat in the Spanish–American War, bringing a close to his nation's once-great empire. That loss frustrated many Spaniards, Primo de Rivera included. They criticized the politicians and the parliamentary system which could not maintain order or foster economic development at home, nor preserve the vestiges of Spain's imperial glory.

Primo de Rivera went to Madrid to serve in the Ministry of War with his uncle. Renowned for his amorous conquests, he reverted to the carefree days of his youth in Jerez. Then in 1902, he married a young Hispano-Cuban, Casilda Sáenz de Heredia. Their marriage was happy, and Casilda bore six children before her death in 1908, following the birth of Fernando. He later was sent on a military mission to France, Switzerland, and Italy in 1909.

The British historian Hugh Thomas says: "He would work enormously hard for weeks on end and then disappear for a  juerga  of dancing, drinking and love-making with gypsies. He would be observed almost alone in the streets of Madrid, swathed in an opera cloak, making his way from one café to another, and on returning home would issue a garrulous and sometimes even intoxicated communiqué -- which he would often have to cancel in the morning."

Between 1909 and 1923, Primo de Rivera's career blossomed, but he became increasingly discouraged with the fortunes of his country. He was wounded in action in October 1911 in the Kert campaign while leading the infantry regiment San Fernando as Colonel. Having returned to Spanish Morocco, he was promoted to brigadier general in 1911, the first graduate of the General Academy to receive such a promotion. Yet social revolution had flared briefly in Barcelona, during the Tragic Week of 1909. After the army had called up conscripts to fight in the Second Rif War in Morocco, Radical republicans and anarchists in Catalonia had proclaimed a general strike. Violence had erupted when the government declared martial law. Anticlerical rioters had burned churches and convents, and tensions grew as socialists and anarchists pressed for radical changes in Spain. The government proved unable to reform itself or the nation and frustration mounted.

After 1918, post-World War I economic difficulties heightened social unrest in Spain. The Cortes (Spanish parliament) under the constitutional monarchy seemed to have no solution to Spain's unemployment, labor strikes, and poverty. In 1921, the Spanish army suffered a stunning defeat in Morocco at the Battle of Annual, which discredited the military's North African policies. By 1923, deputies of the Cortes called for an investigation into the responsibility of King Alfonso XIII and the armed forces for the debacle. Rumors of corruption in the army became rampant.

Establishment of dictatorship

On 13 September 1923, the indignant military, headed by Captain General Miguel Primo de Rivera in Barcelona, overthrew the parliamentary government, upon which Primo de Rivera established himself as dictator. In his typically florid prose, he issued a Manifesto explaining the coup to the people. Resentful of the parliamentarians' attacks against him, King Alfonso tried to give Primo de Rivera legitimacy by naming him prime minister. In justifying his coup d'état, Primo de Rivera announced: "Our aim is to open a brief parenthesis in the constitutional life of Spain and to re-establish it as soon as the country offers us men uncontaminated with the vices of political organization." In other words, he believed that the old class of politicians had ruined Spain, that they sought only their own interests rather than patriotism and nationalism.

Although many leftists opposed the dictatorship, some of the public supported Primo de Rivera. Those Spaniards were tired of the turmoil and economic problems and hoped a strong leader, backed by the military, could put their country on the right track. Others were enraged that the parliament had been brushed aside. As he travelled through Spain, his emotional speeches left no doubt that he was a Spanish patriot. He proposed to keep the dictatorship in place long enough to sweep away the mess created by the politicians. In the meantime, he would use the state to modernize the economy and alleviate the problems of the working class.

Primo de Rivera began by appointing a supreme directorate of eight military men, with himself as president. He then decreed martial law and fired civilian politicians in the provinces, replacing them with middle-ranking officers. When members of the Cortes complained to the king, Alfonso dismissed them, and Primo de Rivera suspended the constitution and dissolved the legislative body. He also moved to repress separatists, who wanted to make the Basque provinces and Catalonia independent from Spain. Despite some reservations, the great Spanish philosopher and intellectual, José Ortega y Gasset, wrote:

""The alpha and omega of the task that the military Directory has imposed is to make an end of the old politics. The purpose is so excellent, that there is no room for objections. The old politics must be ended.""

Nevertheless, other intellectuals such as Miguel de Unamuno and Vicente Blasco Ibáñez criticized the regime and were exiled.

The dictator enjoyed several successes in the early years of his regime. Chief among them was Morocco, which had been festering since the start of the 20th century. Primo de Rivera talked of abandoning the colony altogether, unless sufficient resources were available to defeat the rebellion, and began withdrawing Spanish forces. But when the Moroccans attacked the French sector, they drove the French and Spanish to unite to crush the defiance in 1925. He went to Africa to help lead the troops in person, and 1927 brought victory to the Franco-Spanish forces.

Promoting infrastructure
Primo de Rivera also worked to build infrastructure for his economically backward country. Spain had few cars when he came to power; by 1930, and Rivera aimed to expand this. The Barcelona Metro, started many years earlier, opened in 1924. His economic planners built dams to harness the hydroelectric power of rivers, especially the Duero and the Ebro, and to provide water for irrigation. For the first time, electricity reached some of Spain's rural regions. The regime upgraded Spain's railroads, and this helped the Spanish iron and steel industry prosper. Between 1923 and 1927, foreign trade increased 300%. Overall, his government intervened to protect national producers from foreign competition. Such economic nationalism was largely the brainchild of Primo de Rivera's finance minister, José Calvo Sotelo. Spain benefited from the European post-World War I boom, but the gains were concentrated with the wealthy.

The tranquility was, in part, due to the dictatorship's ways of accommodating the interests of Spanish workers. Imitating the example of Benito Mussolini in Italy, Primo de Rivera forced management and labor to cooperate by organizing 27 corporations (committees) representing different industries and professions. Within each corporation, government arbitrators mediated disputes over wages, hours, and working conditions. This gave Spanish labor more influence than ever before and this might be the reason why the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) and Workers' General Union (UGT) were quick to cooperate with the government and its leaders affiliated themselves with the committees mentioned before. Individual workers also benefited because the regime undertook massive public works. The government financed such projects with huge public loans, which Calvo Sotelo argued would be repaid by the increased taxes resulting from economic expansion. Unemployment largely disappeared.

But Primo de Rivera brought order to Spain with a price: his regime was a dictatorship. He censored the press. When intellectuals criticized the government, he closed El Ateneo, the country's most famous political and literary club. The largely anarchist National Confederation of Labour (CNT) was decreed illegal and, without the support of the PSOE, the general strikes organised by the organisation were dismantled violently by the army. To suppress the separatist fever in Barcelona, the regime tried to expunge Catalan culture. It was illegal to use Catalan in church services or to dance the sardana. Furthermore, many of the dictator's economic reforms did not actually help the poor as huge public spending led to inflation, which the rich could cope with more easily. This led to a huge income disparity between the wealthy and working classes in Spain at the time.

Despite his paternalistic conservatism, Primo de Rivera was enough of a reformer and his policies were radical enough to threaten the interests of the traditional power elite. According to British historian Gerald Brenan, "Spain needed radical reforms and he could only govern by the permission of the two most reactionary forces in the country—the Army and the Church."

Primo de Rivera dared not tackle what was seen as Spain's most pressing problem, agrarian reform, because it would have provoked the great landholding elite. Writes historian Richard Herr, "Primo was not one to waken sleeping dogs, especially if they were big."

Primo de Rivera chiefly failed because he did not create a viable, legitimate political system to preserve and continue his reforms. He seems to have sincerely wanted the dictatorship to be as brief as possible and initially hoped that Spain could live with the Constitution of 1876 and a new group of politicians. The problem was to find new civilian leadership to take the place of the military.

In 1923, he began to create a new "apolitical" party, the Patriotic Union (UP), which was formally organized the following year. Primo de Rivera liked to claim that members of the UP were above the squabbling and corruption of petty politics, that they placed the nation's interests above their own. He thought it would bring ideal democracy to Spain by representing true public opinion. But the UP quite obviously was a political party, despite the dictator's naive protestations. Furthermore, it failed to attract enthusiastic support or even many members.

On 3 December 1925 he moved to restore legitimate government by dismissing the military Directory and replacing it with civilians. Still, the Constitution remained suspended, and criticisms of the regime grew. By summer 1926, former politicians, led by conservative José Sánchez-Guerra y Martínez, pressed the king to remove Primo de Rivera and restore constitutional government. To demonstrate his public support, Primo de Rivera ordered the UP to conduct a plebiscite in September. Voters could endorse the regime or abstain. About a third of those able to vote declined to go to the polls; despite this, The New York Times called the result "a record vote", noting that the turnout was four times higher than any Spanish election until then. Other media were more critical: The Advocate called the vote "a farce".

National Assembly
Nevertheless, buoyed by his victory, Primo de Rivera decided to promote a body tasked with the elaboration of a constitutional draft. On 10 October 1927, with the king in attendance, he opened a National Assembly. Although they met in the Cortes chamber, members of the regime-appointed assembly could only advise Primo de Rivera. They had no legislative power. In 1929, following guidance from the dictator, the assembly finally produced a new constitution draft. Among its provisions, it gave women the vote because Primo de Rivera believed their political views less susceptible to political radicalism. He intended to have the nation accept the new constitution in another plebiscite, to be held in 1930.

Fall from power and death
As the economic boom ended, Spaniards gradually became tired of the dictatorship. The value of the peseta fell against foreign currencies, 1929 brought a bad harvest, and Spain's imports far outstripped the worth of its exports. Conservative critics blamed rising inflation on the government's spending for public works projects. Although no one recognized it at the time, the final months of the year brought the international economic slump which turned into the Great Depression of the 1930s.

When Primo de Rivera lost the support of the king and the armed forces, his dictatorship was doomed. The Spanish military had never unanimously backed his seizure of power, although it had tolerated his rule. But when Primo de Rivera began to inject politics into promotions for the artillery corps, it provoked hostility and opposition. Troubled by the regime's failure to legitimize itself or to solve the country's woes, the king also began to draw away. Alfonso, who had sponsored the establishment of Madrid's University City, watched with dismay as the country's students took to the streets to protest the dictatorship and the king's support for it. A clandestine pamphlet portrayed Alfonso as Primo de Rivera's dancing partner. Yet the king did not have determination to remove Primo de Rivera. On 26 January 1930, the dictator asked the military leaders if he still had their support. Their lukewarm responses, and his recognition that the king no longer backed him, persuaded him to resign two days later. Primo de Rivera retired and moved to Paris, where he died a month and a half later at the age of 60 from a combination of fever and diabetes on 16 March 1930.

Aftermath
In the early 1930s, as with most of the Western world during and after the Great Depression, Spain fell into economic and political chaos. Alfonso XIII appointed General Dámaso Berenguer, one of Primo de Rivera's opponents, to govern. This government promptly failed in its attempt to return to ordinary constitutional order. Different presidential candidates attempted to restore the legitimacy of the monarch, who had discredited himself by siding with the dictatorship. Eventually, municipal elections were called for on 12 April 1931. While monarchist parties won in the overall polls, republican candidates commanded the majority in urban centres, winning the elections in 41 provincial capitals including Madrid and Barcelona. In April 1931, General José Sanjurjo informed the King that he could not count on the loyalty of the armed forces. Alfonso XIII went into exile on 14 April 1931, not formally abdicating until 1941 in favour of his son, Juan de Borbón. The act ushered in the Second Republic. Two years later Primo de Rivera's eldest son, José Antonio, founded the Falange, a Spanish fascist party. Both José Antonio and his brother Fernando were arrested in March 1936 by the republic, and were executed in Alicante prison by Republican forces once the Spanish Civil War began in July 1936. The Nationalists led by Francisco Franco won the Civil War and established a far more authoritarian regime. By that time, many Spaniards regarded Primo de Rivera's relatively mild regime and its economic optimism with greater fondness.

title: Miguel Primo de Rivera


text:
Digital Command Control

Digital Command Control (DCC) is a standard for a system for the digital operation of model railways that permits locomotives on the same electrical section of track to be independently controlled.

The DCC protocol is defined by the Digital Command Control Working group of the US National Model Railroad Association (NMRA). The NMRA has trademarked the term DCC, so while the term Digital Command Control is sometimes used to describe any digital model railway control system, strictly speaking it refers to NMRA DCC.

History and protocols
A digital command control system was developed (under contract by Lenz Elektronik GmbH of Germany) in the 1980s for two German model railway manufacturers, Märklin and Arnold. The first digital decoders that Lenz produced appeared on the market early 1989 for Arnold (N scale) and mid 1990 for Märklin (Z scale, H0 scale and 1 gauge; Digital=). Märklin and Arnold exited the agreement over patent issues, but Lenz continued to develop the system. In 1992 Stan Ames, who later chaired the NMRA/DCC Working Group, investigated the Märklin/Lenz system as possible candidate for the NMRA/DCC standards. When the NMRA Command Control committee requested submissions from manufacturers for its proposed command control standard in the 1990s, Märklin and Keller Engineering submitted their systems for evaluation. The committee was impressed by the Märklin/Lenz system and had settled on digital early in the process. The NMRA eventually developed their own protocol based on the Lenz system and further extended it. The system was later named Digital Command Control. The first commercial systems built on the NMRA DCC were demonstrated at the 1993 NMRA Convention, when the proposed DCC Standard was announced. The proposed standard was published in the October 1993 issue of Model Railroader magazine prior to its adoption. The DCC protocol is the subject of two standards published by the NMRA: S-9.1 specifies the electrical standard, and S-9.2 specifies the communications standard. Several recommended practices documents are also available.

The DCC protocol defines signal levels and timings on the track. DCC does not specify the protocol used between the DCC command station and other components such as additional throttles. A variety of proprietary standards exist, and in general, command stations from one vendor are not compatible with throttles from another vendor.

RailCom
In 2006 Lenz, together with Kühn, Zimo and Tams, started development of an extension to the DCC protocol to allow a feedback channel from decoders to the command station. This feedback channel can typically be used to signal which train occupies a certain section, but as well to inform the command station of the actual speed of an engine. This feedback channel is known under the name RailCom, and was standardized in 2007 as NMRA RP 9.3.1.

Quoting "NMRA Standards and Recommended Practices":

 * S-9.3 DCC Bi-Directional Communications Standard
 * S-9.3.1 (discontinued)
 * S-9.3.2 DCC Basic Decoder Transmission - (updated 12/20/2012) UNDER REVISION

How DCC works
A DCC system consists of power supplies, command stations, boosters, throttles and decoders.

The DCC command station creates the digital packet using data from a throttle. The digital packet contains the decoder's address, instructions and an error byte to check the validity of the packet.

Many command stations are integrated with an amplifier (booster) which, in combination with its power supply, modulates the voltage on the track to encode digital messages while providing electric power. For large systems additional boosters may be employed to provide extra power.

The track voltage is a pure digital signal, described as a differential signal with no ground reference. One rail is always the inverse logical state of the other, with each data pulse repeated. The DCC signal does not follow a sine wave, nor is it a carrier superimposed on a DC voltage. The command station/booster quickly switches the voltage applied to the rails on and off, resulting in a binary stream of pulses. As there is no polarity, direction of travel is independent of the rail's state. The length of time the voltage is applied provides the method for encoding data. To represent a binary one, the period is short (nominally 106 μs), while a zero is represented by a longer period (nominally at least 200 μs).

Each locomotive is equipped with an individually addressed multifunction DCC decoder that takes the signal from the track, processes and acts on the instructions. The electric motor's speed and direction is controlled using pulse-width modulation. Each decoder is given a unique address, and will not act on commands intended for a different decoder, thus providing independent control of locomotives and accessories anywhere on the layout without special wiring requirements. Decoders can also control functions such as lights, smoke generators, and sound generators. These functions can be operated remotely from the DCC throttle. Accessory decoders can also receive commands from the throttle in a similar way to allow control of turnouts, uncouplers and other operating accessories (such as station announcements) and lights.

It is possible to power a single analog (DC) model locomotive by itself (or in addition to the DCC decoder equipped engines), depending on the choice of commercially available DCC starter systems. The technique is known as zero stretching and is not part of the NMRA DCC Standard. The zero bit's period can be expanded (stretched) to make the average voltage (and thus the current) either forward or reverse, depending on which rail the stretched zero bit is applied to. However, because the raw power contains a large harmonic component, DC motors heat up much more quickly than they would on DC power, and some motor types (particularly coreless electric motors) can be damaged by a DCC signal.

Advantages over analog control
The great advantage of digital control is the individual control of locomotives wherever they are on the layout. With analog control, operating more than one locomotive independently requires the track to be wired into separate blocks each having switches to select the controller. Using digital control, locomotives may be controlled wherever they are.

Digital locomotive decoders often include inertia simulation, where the locomotive will gradually increase or decrease speeds in a realistic manner. Many decoders will also constantly adjust motor power to maintain constant speed. Most digital controllers allow an operator to set the speed of one locomotive and then select another locomotive to control its speed while the previous locomotive maintains its speed.

Recent developments include on-board sound modules for locomotives as small as N scale, made possible by advancements in smartphones, which tend to use small yet high-quality speakers.

Wiring requirements are generally reduced compared to a conventional DC powered layout. With digital control of accessories, the wiring is distributed to accessory decoders rather than being individually connected to a central control panel. For portable layouts this can greatly reduce the number of inter-board connections - only the digital signal and any accessory power supplies need cross baseboard joins.

Competing systems
There are two main European alternatives: Selectrix, an open Normen Europäischer Modellbahnen (NEM) standard, and the Märklin Digital proprietary system. The US Rail-Lynx system provides power with a fixed voltage to the rails while commands are sent digitally using infrared light.

Other systems include the Digital Command System and Trainmaster Command Control.

Several major manufacturers (including Märklin, Fleischmann, Roco, Hornby and Bachmann), have entered the DCC market alongside makers which specialize in it (including Lenz, Digitrax, ESU, ZIMO, Kühn, Tams, NCE, Digikeijs, and CVP Products, Sound Traxx, Train Control Systems and ZTC). Most Selectrix central units are multi protocol units supporting DCC fully or partially (e.g. Rautenhaus, Stärz and MTTM).

title: Digital Command Control


text:
Sauropsida

Sauropsida (Greek for "lizard faces") is a clade of amniotes, broadly equivalent to the class Reptilia, though typically used in a broader sense to also include extinct stem-group relatives of modern reptiles and birds (which, as theropod dinosaurs, are nested within reptiles as more closely related to crocodilians than to lizards or turtles). The most popular definition states that Sauropsida is the sibling taxon to Synapsida, the other clade of amniotes which includes mammals as its only modern representatives. Although early synapsids have historically been referred to as "mammal-like reptiles", all synapsids are more closely related to mammals than to any modern reptile. Sauropsids, on the other hand, include all amniotes more closely related to modern reptiles than to mammals. This includes Aves (birds), which are recognized as a subgroup of archosaurian reptiles despite originally being named as a separate class in Linnaean taxonomy.

The base of Sauropsida forks into two main groups of "reptiles": Eureptilia ("true reptiles") and Parareptilia ("next to reptiles"). Eureptilia encompasses all living reptiles (including birds), as well as various extinct groups. Parareptilia is typically considered to be an entirely extinct group, though a few hypotheses for the origin of turtles have suggested that they belong to the parareptiles. The clades Recumbirostra and Varanopidae, traditionally thought to be lepospondyls and synapsids respectively, may also be basal sauropsids. The term "Sauropsida" originated in 1864 with Thomas Henry Huxley, who grouped birds with reptiles based on fossil evidence.

Huxley and the fossil gaps

The term Sauropsida ("lizard faces") has a long history, and hails back to Thomas Henry Huxley, and his opinion that birds had risen from the dinosaurs. He based this chiefly on the fossils of Hesperornis and Archaeopteryx, that were starting to become known at the time. In the Hunterian lectures delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons in 1863, Huxley grouped the vertebrate classes informally into mammals, sauroids, and ichthyoids (the latter containing the anamniotes), based on the gaps in physiological traits and lack of transitional fossils that seemed to exist between the three groups. Early in the following year he proposed the names Sauropsida and Ichthyopsida for the two latter. Huxley did however include groups on the mammalian line (synapsids) like Dicynodon among the sauropsids. Thus, under the original definition, Sauropsida contained not only the groups usually associated with it today, but also several groups that today are known to be in the mammalian side of the tree.

Sauropsids redefined (Goodrich, 1916)
By the early 20th century, the fossils of Permian synapsids from South Africa had become well known, allowing palaeontologists to trace synapsid evolution in much greater detail. The term Sauropsida was taken up by E. S. Goodrich in 1916 much like Huxley's, to include lizards, birds and their relatives. He distinguished them from mammals and their extinct relatives, which he included in the sister group Theropsida (now usually replaced with the name Synapsida). Goodrich's classification thus differs somewhat from Huxley's, in which the non-mammalian synapsids (or at least the dicynodontians) fell under the sauropsids. Goodrich supported this division by the nature of the hearts and blood vessels in each group, and other features such as the structure of the forebrain. According to Goodrich, both lineages evolved from an earlier stem group, the Protosauria ("first lizards"), which included some Paleozoic amphibians as well as early reptiles predating the sauropsid/synapsid split (and thus not true sauropsids). His concept differed from modern classifications in that he considered a modified fifth metatarsal to be an apomorphy of the group, leading him to place Sauropterygia, Mesosauria and possibly Ichthyosauria and Araeoscelida in the Theropsida.

Detailing the reptile family tree
In 1956, D. M. S. Watson observed that sauropsids and synapsids diverged very early in the reptilian evolutionary history, and so he divided Goodrich's Protosauria between the two groups. He also reinterpreted the Sauropsida and Theropsida to exclude birds and mammals respectively, making them paraphyletic, unlike Goodrich's definition. Thus his Sauropsida included Procolophonia, Eosuchia, Protorosauria, Millerosauria, Chelonia (turtles), Squamata (lizards and snakes), Rhynchocephalia, Rhynchosauria, Choristodera, Thalattosauria, Crocodilia, "thecodonts" (paraphyletic basal Archosauria), non-avian dinosaurs, pterosaurs and sauropyterygians. However, his concept differed from the modern one in that reptiles without an otic notch, such as araeoscelids and captorhinids, were believed to be theropsids.

This classification supplemented, but was never as popular as, the classification of the reptiles (according to Romer's classic Vertebrate Paleontology ) into four subclasses according to the positioning of temporal fenestrae, openings in the sides of the skull behind the eyes. Since the advent of phylogenetic nomenclature, the term Reptilia has fallen out of favor with many taxonomists, who have used Sauropsida in its place to include a monophyletic group containing the traditional reptiles and the birds.

Cladistic definitions
The class Reptilia has been known to be an evolutionary grade rather than a clade for as long as evolution has been recognised. Reclassifying reptiles has been among the key aims of phylogenetic nomenclature. The term Sauropsida had from the mid 20th century been used to denote a branch-based clade containing all amniote species which are not on the synapsid side of the split between reptiles and mammals. This group encompasses all now-living reptiles as well as birds, and as such is comparable to Goodrich's classification. The main difference is that better resolution of the early amniote tree has split up most of Goodrich's "Protosauria", though definitions of Sauropsida essentially identical to Huxley's (i.e. including the mammal-like reptiles) are also forwarded. Some later cladistic work has used Sauropsida more restrictively, to signify the crown group, i.e. all descendants of the last common ancestor of extant reptiles and birds. A number of phylogenetic stem, node and crown definitions have been published, anchored in a variety of fossil and extant organisms, thus there is currently no consensus of the actual definition (and thus content) of Sauropsida as a phylogenetic unit.

Some taxonomists, such as Benton (2004), have co-opted the term to fit into traditional rank-based classifications, making Sauropsida and Synapsida class-level taxa to replace the traditional Class Reptilia, while Modesto and Anderson (2004), using the PhyloCode standard, have suggested replacing the name Sauropsida with their redefinition of Reptilia, arguing that the latter is by far better known and should have priority.

Cladistic definitions of Sauropsida include:

 * Sauropsida as the total group of reptiles: "Reptiles plus all other amniotes more closely related to them than they are to mammals" (Gauthier, 1994). This is a branch-based total group definition. Gauthier (1994) considered turtles to be descended from parareptiles, thus defining Reptilia as a more restricted crown group encompassing diapsids and parareptiles (apart from mesosaurs, which he considered to be the most basal branch of sauropsids).
 * Sauropsida as a total group, synonymous with Reptilia sensu lato: "The most inclusive clade containing Lacerta agilis and Crocodylus niloticus, but not Homo sapiens" (Modesto & Anderson, 2004). This total group definition leaves the question of turtle ancestry unresolved.
 * Sauropsida as a broad node-based group: "The last common ancestor of mesosaurs, testudines and diapsids, and all its descendants" (Laurin & Reisz, 1995). Though formulated differently, this grouping was similar in scope and intention to the definition provided by Gauthier (1994).

Evolutionary history

Sauropsids evolved from basal amniotes approximately 320 million years ago, in the Carboniferous Period of the Paleozoic Era. In the Mesozoic Era (from about 250 million years ago to about 66 million years ago), sauropsids were the largest animals on land, in the water, and in the air. The Mesozoic is sometimes called the Age of Reptiles. In the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, the large-bodied sauropsids died out in the global extinction event at the end of the Mesozoic era. With the exception of a few species of birds, the entire dinosaur lineage became extinct; in the following era, the Cenozoic, the remaining birds diversified so extensively that, today, nearly one out of every three species of land vertebrate is a bird species.

Phylogeny
The cladogram presented here illustrates the "family tree" of sauropsids, and follows a simplified version of the relationships found by M.S. Lee, in 2013. All genetic studies have supported the hypothesis that turtles (formerly categorized together with ancient anapsids) are diapsid reptiles, despite lacking any skull openings behind their eye sockets; some studies have even placed turtles among the archosaurs,    though a few have recovered turtles as lepidosauromorphs instead. The cladogram below used a combination of genetic (molecular) and fossil (morphological) data to obtain its results.

Laurin & Piñeiro (2017) and Modesto (2019) proposed an alternate phylogeny of basal sauropsids. In this tree, parareptiles include turtles and are closely related to non-araeoscelidian diapsids. The family Varanopidae, otherwise included in Synapsida, is considered by Modesto a sauropsid group.

In recent studies, the "microsaur" clade Recumbirostra, historically considered lepospondyl reptiliomorphs, have been recovered as early sauropsids.

Structure difference with synapsids
The last common ancestor of synapsids and Sauropsida lived at around 320mya during Carboniferous, known as Reptiliomorpha.

Thermal and secretion
The early synapsids inherited abundant glands on their skins from their amphibian ancestors. Those glands evolved into sweat glands in synapsids, which granted them the ability to maintain constant body temperature but made them unable to save water from evaporation. Moreover, the way synapsids discharge nitrogenous waste is through urea, which is toxic and must be dissolved in water to be secreted. Unfortunately, the upcoming Permian and Triassic periods were arid periods. As a result, only a small percent of early synapsids survived in the land from South Africa to Antarctica in today's geography. Unlike synapsids, sauropsids do not have those glands on the skin; their way of nitrogenous waste emission is through uric acid which does not require water and can be excreted with feces. As a result, sauropsids were able to expand to all environments and reach their pinnacle. Even today, most vertebrates that live in arid environments are sauropsids, snakes and desert lizards for example.

Brain structure
Different from how synapsids have their cortex in six different layers of neurons which is called neocortex, the cerebrum of Sauropsida has a completely different structure. For the corresponding structure of the cerebrum in the classic view, the neocortex of synapsids is homology with only the Archicortex of the avian brain. However, in the modern view appeared since the 1960s, behavioral studies suggested that avian neostriatum and hyperstriatum can receive signals of vision, hearing, and body sensations, which means they act just like the neocortex. Comparing an avian brain to that to a mammal, nuclear-to-layered hypothesis proposed by Karten (1969), suggested that the cells which form layers in synapsids' neocortex, gather individually by type and form several nuclei. For synapsids, when one new function is adapted in evolution it will be assigned to a separate area of cortex, so for each function, synapsids will have to develop a separate area of cortex, and damage to that specific cortex may cause disability. However, for Sauropsida functions are disassembled and assigned to all nuclei. In this case, brain function is highly flexible for Sauropsida, even with a small brain, many Sauropsida can still have a relatively high intelligence compared to mammals, for example, birds in the family Corvidae. So, it is possible that some non-avian dinosaurs, like Tyrannosaurus, which had tiny brains compared to their enormous body size, were more intelligent than previously thought.

title: Sauropsida