History

Atlanta International Raceway, a motor-racing speedway in Hampton, Georgia, about twenty miles south of Atlanta, was the site of the Atlanta International Pop Festival on July 4 and 5, 1969 — the first festival of its kind in the Deep South, and more than a month before Woodstock. Promoter Alex Cooley, inspired by the Miami Pop Festival the previous December, put the crowd in the infield. Estimates of attendance run from roughly eighty thousand to a hundred and fifty thousand. Temperatures approached a hundred degrees and local fire departments turned hoses on the crowd as improvised sprinklers. Georgia's segregationist governor Lester Maddox called it one of the worst blights ever to strike the state, which is a fair measure of what a rock festival meant in the South that summer. It remains among the largest public gatherings in Georgia's history.

Its Place in the Scene

A racetrack that became the first major Southern rock festival site — the Deep South's answer to Monterey, a month before Woodstock.

The Facts

Shows at this Venue