Some 57 years ago, two historic African American figures met in the city of Atlanta at a sports event co-sponsored by The Coca-Cola Company. The event was the Annual Sports Jamboree of the “100% Wrong Club”, a unit of the sports department of the Atlanta Daily World newspaper. The historic figures? Jackie Robinson, the first African American to play in Major League Baseball, and Mrs. Mary Alexander, the first African American model to appear in Coca-Cola advertising. “That was the highlight of my life”, Mrs. Alexander shared with me a few weeks ago when recounting the experience. “I was modeling for Coke and they asked me if I would come to the [sports program] and I said, ‘Yes! What do I do?’ and they replied, ‘You just go there and meet the people and talk and drink Coke.’ I said ‘fine!’” In addition to meeting Jackie Robinson, she also met Branch Rickey, the general manager who signed Robinson to the Brooklyn Dodgers. 

Yesterday, I got to take a bus trip to Chattanooga, Tennessee to give a presentation on the history of Coca-Cola. While I have given this presentation many times in the past, never have I done it while riding on a bus, standing backwards (to face the audience). As I told them, I considered it a successful presentation simply because I did not lose my balance and fall down the steps! When it comes to Coca-Cola in bottles, all roads stem from Chattanooga, site of the first Coca-Cola Bottling Company which was started when Benjamin Thomas and Joseph Whitehead acquired the rights to bottle Coke in 1899. In fact, there is a local saying that I learned: "Inside every bottle of Coca-Cola, there's a little bit of Chattanooga."

The highlight of my day came when I met Robert, who is pictured below with me at a great shop called The Ice Cream Show in Chattanooga. Robert told me that he had a Coke every afternoon between 3-4 PM, and loves ice cream at night. He is an 80 year-old Alabama native, and even has a case of the Coca-Cola Bear Bryant commemorative bottles, a favorite among Coca-Cola Collectors. Please join me in giving Robert a Coca-Cola salute!

In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, I wrote an article for Coca-Cola Journey entitled “Fighting for Civil Rights at the Soda Fountain”. It details the role that soda fountain sit-ins in the 1950s-60s had in furthering Civil Rights in the United States. It was fun to research and write this piece.

Part of my inspiration for writing it was learning over the past year that the first job that my grandmother, Lydia Booker Kimber, had was at a soda fountain (of all places!) when she was sixteen years old. She described to me how she learned to take orders and serve soft drinks at the lunch counter of the Southside Drug Store in Farmville, Virginia in the 1950s in such detail that she virtually put me there. I imagine the visual she painted looking similar to the image above of “Women behind lunch counter with soda fountain”, taken in 1950s Baltimore, Maryland by photographer Paul S. Henderson .

She lived during an awkward time in which she played with white children in her community and had a wonderful relationship with the white soda fountain owner she was hired and trained by, yet could not sit down at the very counter with them because she was African-American, and Farmville soda fountains were segregated. So it is very interesting that soda fountains just like these played a key role in the fight for Civil Rights in the U.S. During the course of my research, I heard first-hand stories from Marilyn Pryce Hoytt, who participated along with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in an Atlanta sit-in, and my own mother-in-law, Amy Thompson, who participated in a sit-in as a college student in Savannah, Georgia. I’m thankful today that because of the work of Dr. King and so many others who fought for civil rights, and I look forward to visiting the spot of the Southside Drug Store and soda fountain the next time I visit my grandmother in Virginia.

I always loved the Disney version of the Jules Verne story Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea with Captain Nemo aboard the Nautilus.  I even remember going on the ride at Walt Disney World as a kid.  I was recently doing some research in The Refresher, one of our internal publications, when I saw a story from February, 1956 that a cup fountain dispenser had been specially designed to be installed aboard the USS Nautilus as a test.  The Nautilus was the world's first nuclear powered submarine and was launched in January, 1955. In 1958, the Nautilus became the first submarine to complete a submerged voyage under the North Pole. The fountain dispenser had to be specially designed and the outside dimensions could not be larger than 25 inches, allowing it to be lowered through the hatch. We don't have any photos of the fountain dispenser because the magazine notes that photography was restricted on board the sub. Follow up articles in The Refresher noted that the test was a success and the Navy had ordered fountain equipment for all the other submarines under construction. Had Coca-Cola been in France when Jules Verne wrote his story in 1870, I am sure he would have had a fountain dispenser installed in that submarine as well. ^TR

We have an intern working with us this summer who has been watching a lot of the London 2012 Olympic Games. As she was processing through some sports photos, we asked her to share a little bit about what she has been working on. Here's her story: My name is Kendall Barksdale. I am a junior at Clark Atlanta University and I intern in the Coca-Cola Archives. As an archives intern, it is my job to preserve the history of Coca-Cola by finding each document, picture, slide, and many other artifacts a deserving and fitting home based on the category, time period, and historical significance. Here is a picture of me at work: I have been watching the London 2012 Olympics and couldn’t help but think about an interesting photo that I recently found while rehousing some pictures in the archives. The picture is of a 1914 basketball team advertising Coca-Cola, even on the basketball. It is one of my favorite archive pieces because I love basketball and this photo captured my eyes as soon as I saw it. Here is the artifact I am referring to: I collect Coca-Cola items as well. One of my personal archives include a 1999 Motorized Coca-Cola camera that is battery operated and requires Fuji film. My grandmother gave it to me when I was only 7 years old, much too young to know about photography. As a result, it still has 20 more pictures left on the film. My grandmother passed away four years ago so I keep this Coca-Cola camera in memory of her and as an archive.

I had an early morning today as a production crew from the Discovery Channel was in town to film a segment for the program How Do They Do It. All filming at the World of Coca-Cola has to do in in the morning before the building is open to the public because we often need to open the cases. This has led to many early mornings there.  Matt Shakespeare and cameraman Peter Thorn of the crew were great and recorded segments on the secret formula of Coca-Cola and a variety of other scenes.  We will give an update when we get the details on when the program will air.

As a thank you for sharing our 125th Anniversary Year with us here on the blog, we close out one last time from the voice of someone who knew life before Coca-Cola was invented, in his own words. J.H. Bobbitt of Raleigh, North Carolina, declared in 1892 that "Coca-Cola has come to stay." He turned out to be right. This letter is also on display in the Milestones of Refreshment Gallery at World of Coca-Cola, and I'll let you read his first hand letter below. Cheers, and here's to another 125-plus years for Coca-Cola!

In this last week of our 125th Anniversary, it is only right that we close it out with the final two letters in our "125 Years Ago... Life Without Coca-Cola" series. Today's letter comes from an Ocala, Florida store with a fantastic name: The Anti-Monopoly Drug Store. The letter is from 1891, and simply reads as follows:

Sir,

Coca-Cola is now the most popular drink sold in this vicinity, every body wants it. Have sold sixty [gallons] in two months.

Yours,

H.C. Grom, Proprietor

The next letter in our "125 Years Ago... Life without Coca-Cola" series is a February 17, 1891 letter written to Asa Candler from a drug company in Griffin, Georgia. The soda fountain at this location had been serving Coke since 1886, and they shared this letter just two weeks prior to letter three in the series. It reads, "It gives us pleasure to attest the merits of Coca-Cola... It is now the most popular drink that we dispense.

The third letter in our "125 Years Ago... Life without Coca-Cola" series comes from a soda fountain operator named J.B. Davenport in Augusta, Georgia. Writing on March 4, 1891, just shy of the fifth anniversary of Coca-Cola, he shares, "My customers were so delighted with Coca-Cola last year I have determined to make it my leader this year." He continued later, "I have been running soda founts for the last 15 years, during that time I have bit at nearly every new drink offered. My experience has been they run for a season, then die - not so with Coca-Cola. I am pleased with it. In my opinion Coca-Cola has come to stay." At the end of the testimonial letter, he gives advice to southern fountain operators to "let alone" beverages that come from the North, and "adopt Coca-Cola". While I, a Yankee, take offense at the regionalization, I can't argue the point about adopting Coca-Cola! While letter two in the series reported that "New converts are coming in everyday" for Coca-Cola, this letter proclaimed Coke "a pleasure to dispense".