Historic preservation nonprofit Historic Athens has announced that it is seeking more signatures on its petition to name a downtown park after the area’s first Black state legislators.
Historic Athens launched the petition to name the park next to the newly renovated Costa Building after Alfred Richardson and Madison Davis in September. The organization said in a release that it has collected nearly 600 of the 1,000 signatures it needs and wants to rename the park on Juneteenth this year.
Richardson and Davis were the county’s first black legislators, elected after the end of the Civil War in 1870. The lives of both men are chronicled in the history book Enduring Legacies by Al Hester, as well as in A Story Untold by Michael Thurmond. Historic Athens will also release a publication about the men this month.
The petition can be signed at the Historic Athens Welcome Center, located Downtown at 280 E Dougherty St., Athens, GA and at all upcoming Historic Athens events.
