Last Friday, James Paschal, one of the founders of Paschal’s Restaurant, died in Atlanta due to the complications of heart surgery.  He was 88 years old.  Paschal’s Restaurant was an unofficial headquarters for the Civil Rights Movement in Atlanta.  Many of the organizing meetings to plan now historic civil rights actions, like, the March on Washington and the Selma-to-Montgomery March, were held at Paschal’s.  At a time when all public accommodations were segregated by law throughout the South, Paschal’s was considered an oasis where civil rights activists could congregate, relax, nourish themselves, and in the comfort of that environment fuel their minds to plan major movement actions.  Rep. John Lewis, the last remaining member of the Big Six civil rights leaders and former chairman of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee, made this comment about the passing of James Paschal:

Last Friday, James Paschal, one of the founders of Paschal’s Restaurant, died in Atlanta due to the complications of heart surgery.  He was 88 years old.  Paschal’s Restaurant was an unofficial headquarters for the Civil Rights Movement in Atlanta.  Many of the organizing meetings to plan now historic civil rights actions, like the March on Washington and the Selma-to-Montgomery March, were held at Paschal’s.  At a time when public accommodations were racially segregated by law throughout the South, Paschal’s was considered an oasis where civil rights activists could congregate, relax, nourish themselves, and in the comfort of that environment fuel their minds to plan major movement actions.  Rep. John Lewis, the last remaining member of the Big Six civil rights leaders and former chairman of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), made this comment about the passing of James Paschal:

An estimated 33 million people are living with HIV/AIDS in the world today. More than a million of those people live in the United States. From 2001 to 2005, the number of deaths from AIDS had decreased throughout the nation, however, that rate continued to climb in the South.  According to the Centers for Disease Control, there are more people in the South living with and dying from AIDS today than in any other region of the country.