[00:00:01.89] TODD MICHNEY: A quick story here from Paul Crater who's Atlanta History Center's vice president of Collections & Research Services. I think I didn't get his title perfectly right this morning. So I'd like to invite Paul up to just give us a short explanation of, how were these papers overlooked? And what were the circumstances in which they found them? 

[00:00:21.29] PAUL CRATER: Thanks, Todd. So around 2011, I was reading, flipping through Gary Pomerantz' book-- Where Peachtree Meets Sweet Auburn. And it's a history of the Allen family and the Jackson family, using the history of those two men and their families to talk about race and the development of the city of Atlanta. 

[00:00:46.04] So I got to a point in the book where he's describing Mayor Allen's testimony in support of the 1964 civil rights bill. And he's talking about feedback that he got from his constituents who did not agree with him. And I did too when I read books about the history of it. 

[00:01:15.64] I'm very interested to what archival collections are around the city and what information is in them, so I looked at the footnotes. And the footnotes to this was Ivan Allen Archive. And I'm like, OK, what's that? So I just thought, well, I'll email him, the author, not expecting to hear anything back. 

[00:01:37.93] And two minutes later, I get a phone call at work. And it's Gary Pomerantz, this acclaimed author. Very surprised. And so I talked to him about, OK, well, where did you get this Atlanta or Ivan Allen Archive? And he said that he went to the city clerk's office, the records management facility in city hall and went through about four or five boxes of material. And he said it's really not much. 

[00:02:08.70] But that still piqued my interest. And the Atlanta History Center has a relationship with the clerk's office, the records manager in which the history center receives all the city council minutes and Board of Alderman minutes. We have them dating back to before the Civil War. And we have other city of Atlanta materials and Fulton County materials. So I talked to the clerk. And I said, can I get an appointment? Can I see these records? 

[00:02:35.92] So we finally got an appointment. And I got there. And it was in City Hall East before it became Ponce City Market. And in this room was 60 boxes of material. And, OK, great. So I go through all of it. And I'm noticing, well, not all of this is Ivan Allen. Most of it, in fact, is Sam Massell, which is weird. Because Sam Massell donated his papers to the history center in 1991. 

[00:03:05.53] So the long and short of it is there were 25 boxes of material. Not just a few, but 25 boxes of material of Ivan Allen's-- mostly his first term in office. His second term is scantily documented. So I'm convinced somewhere out there is his second term records. 

[00:03:28.59] Gary Pomerantz said that Ivan Allen told him that his records were destroyed, that they were lost, that somehow it happened with his furniture company or office supply company that the workers dumped them. So I don't know if that's true or not. But there were 25 boxes of his records from his first term that we now have. 

[00:03:51.90] And it took an act of city council, a resolution to get them to the Atlanta History Center where they are now, where they're processed, and now where they are digitized. And Todd and his team has done a wonderful job in further illuminating what is in that collection. So that's the backstory of how the Ivan Allen, Merrill papers came to light.