© 2024 WUGA | University of Georgia
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Community Forum on Future of F.C. Maddox Center Scheduled for Thursday

Athens-Clarke County Heritage Foundation

 Athens residents and others are invited to attend a community forum this Thursday on the future of the F.C. Maddox Center. Greater Bethel A.M.E. Church and the Athens-Clarke Heritage Foundation are partnering to determine the feasibility of rehabilitating and re-using the historic facility on Magnolia Street.

 

"It was actually built around 1950, and it was originally built as an American Legion building for African American veterans in Athens," said Amy Kissane, executive director of the Athens-Clarke Heritage Foundation. "Because the DSW and the American Legions, they weren't formally segregated, but they were effectively segregated." 

 

The meeting is Thursday from 6 to 7 pm at Greater Bethel on Rose Street.

 

The partners also nominated the building for the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation’s 2018 Places in Peril list, a program that seeks to identify special, irreplaceable historic buildings and sites in Georgia that are in danger of being lost. The final list will be announced in November.

 

American Legion Post No. 535 in Athens was chartered by the Veterans Administration on November 26, 1947, just a year after the state’s first African American chapter, Post No. 500, was founded in Savannah. The establishment of Post No. 535 was a statement of the determination of African-Americans in Athens to increase their own social opportunities at a time when segregation still sharply divided the community. 

 

 

Alexia Ridley joined WUGA as Television and Radio News Anchor and Reporter in 2013. When WUGA TV concluded operations, she became the primary Reporter for WUGA Radio. Alexia came to Athens from Macon where she served as the News Director and show host for WGXA TV. She's a career journalist and Savannah native hailing from the University of Michigan. However, Alexia considers herself an honorary UGA DAWG!