Macon has been a crossroads of cultures since Native Americans built the massive earthworks that now form the Ocmulgee National Monument. In the 19th century, fortunes rose and fell with the price of cotton for small farmers and businessmen, as well as plantation owners. The Civil War destroyed the plantation economy, but it left Macon's historic treasures largely undisturbed. Though manufacturing replaced plantation slavery, cotton and race remained central facts of life as the "City of Churches" adapted to a changing world. From the 1950s onward, the city's role as a textile center...