Kathleen Walls
Kathleen Walls, former reporter for Union Sentinel in Blairsville, GA, is publisher/writer for American Roads and Global Highways. She is the author of several travel books including Georgia’s Ghostly Getaways, Finding Florida’s Phantoms, Hosts With Ghosts, and Wild About Florida series. Kathleen’s articles have appeared in Family Motor Coaching Association Magazine, Food Wine Travel Magazine, Weekender Extended, Travel World International, Tours4Mobile and others. She is a photographer with many of her original photographs appearing in her travel ezine, American Roads, as well as other publications. Her fiction includes Last Step, which was made into a feature movie of the same name by Forbes Productions, Kudzu, Under A Bloody Flag and Under A Black Flag.
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Listen to Kathleen’s interview talking about the American south.
Articles by Kathleen Walls
The small Thiokol Memorial Museum in Kingsland, Georgia, tells a big story about one of the worst industrial tragedies in US history. The tragedy struck Camden County on February 3, 1971, when a plant explosion killed 29 and injured another 50 people. Thiokol Chemical was a complex of 36 buildings between Kingsland and Woodbine, another small town about 12 miles to the north, which manufactured trip flares for the Vietnam War. The victims were primarily women of color who did not know the dangerous nature of the material they were using.
During the Gilded Age, wealthy Northerners came to Aiken, South Carolina for the warm weather, spring water, and pine-scented air. The railroad arrived here in 1830, and the Northerners followed. They established what became known as their Winter Colony. Stories of these well-heeled guests add to the charm of this Southern gem.
Award-winning artist and sculptor Tyree Guyton started The Heidelberg Project in 1986 as a political protest after he returned to his old Detroit neighborhood, the Heidelberg area in the McDougall-Hunt Neighborhood, and found dereliction and debris. Drugs and crime made the neighborhood unsafe to walk even in the daytime. He began cleaning up vacant lots with the help of his grandfather, Sam Mackey. Then he took the first step in what became known as the Heidelberg Project; he painted his mother's house with brightly colored polka dots as a statement that we are all different but should all be treated equally. It became known as the Dotty Wotty House, sometimes called the People's House.
Over the years, many people helped create the Florida Keys we know today. Some lived there, others only visited. Today, Mallory Square Sculpture Garden displays busts of people who impacted Key West. From Bogart to Hemingway to President Harry Truman, the Florida Keys has always been a magnet for famous characters.
Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historical Park & Preservation District in Atlanta, Georgia, shares the story of how a young Black boy born into the segregated South became a national icon for Civil Rights. The park consists of several blocks along Auburn Avenue. Here you’ll find the Visitor Center, Martin Luther King, Jr’s birth home, and the BEHOLD monument. Other historic sites include Fire Station No. 6, The King Center, where Dr. and Mrs. King are buried, and Freedom Hall. The historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, where King gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.
