One summer night in 1949, Margaret Mitchell and her husband John Marsh go out to dinner.

It's August, Atlanta, hot humid.

They walked to a restaurant on Peach Tree Street in Midtown, not far from their apartment.

They were going out for the evening and they were going to go to see the Canterbury Tales,

the movie at the Atlanta Art Theatre, which was located at the corner of Peach Tree and 13th Street.

I'm standing in front of the site of the theater with Michael Rose, executive vice president

of the Atlanta History Center.

They had gone to the Womens Club prior to going to the movie.

I'm just cutting across the street.

So they simply came out of the Womens Club.

We're going to cross the street.

Margaret Mitchell was, at that point, America's reigning literary celebrity.

Author of Gone with the Wind, one of the best-selling American novels ever.

In Atlanta, she was beloved, a little pixie of a woman who stood for everything white

southerners of that generation wanted to stand for. Beauty, wit, nostalgia. People in Atlanta

called her R Peggy. Mitchell and her husband leave the Atlanta Women's Club,

cross Peach Tree Midblock. And as they do, an off-duty taxi driver named Hugh Gravitt comes barreling

around the bend. His car is heading right for the couple.

They were maybe about halfway across. That's when they see the car. He heads one direction,

and she heads the other direction. But it's kind of like the driver, I think, saw him first,

so veers in the other direction. Which is right at her. Right? Yes.

Gravitt is speeding. He's going at least 50 miles an hour down a curving two-lane street

...