From the early 1960s to the present, perhaps no college town in America has changed as much as Athens, Georgia. Over the course of 50 years, the city experienced desegregation at all levels of education, encountered all types of activism and demonstrations, and established an unparalleled music scene that still flourishes. Beginning in the 1980s, University of Georgia athletic teams began winning national championships and continue to do so, the 1996 Olympics came to Athens, and the downtown district is no longer a retail center but a 24-hour central city with more restaurants, bars, and eclectic shops than one can count. Athens is no longer the sleepy, small college town it once was, but truly, the Classic City, in every sense of the name.
