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Our Mission
Atlanta attorney Michael R. Hollis founded one of the earliest Black-owned airlines, Air Atlanta in 1984. Hollis was born in Atlanta, Georgia, on October 22, 1953, the youngest of five children of Flem H. Hollis, a Pullman porter, and Virginia R. Hollis, an official with the Atlanta Housing Authority. Growing up in a segregated neighborhood of Atlanta in the late 1950's and 1960's, Hollis witnessed non-violent campaigns across the South as well as the leadership of fellow Atlanta resident Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
By the time he was fifteen, Hollis was elected president of the Atlanta Youth Congress. Through this organization, he met influential Atlanta leaders, including then Mayor Ivan Allen Jr., Andrew Young, Julian Bond, Vernon Jordan Jr., H.J. Russell and the man who would one day become the first Black mayor of Atlanta, Maynard H. Jackson.
In 1980 at the age of twenty-seven, Hollis presented a business plan to the National Alliance of Postal and Federal Employees (NAPFE) to create a Black-owned airline. NAPFE invested $500,000 in Hollis' plan, resulting in Air Atlanta, which was officially launched in February 1984. The airline was short-lived and filed for bankruptcy in April 1987.
Hollis then teamed with Atlanta builder, H.J. Russell, to establish Hollis Communications, which owned an Atlanta radio station that was sold later to Cox Enterprises. In the early 1990s, Hollis launched and sold Hanover Credit Company, and then a few years later, he established Blue-Sky Petroleum Co. with his older brother, James B. Arnold. Blue-Sky owned dozens of convenience and petroleum retail stores in metro Atlanta.
In 2003 he and another brother Julius Hollis, formed a partnership with JP Morgan Chase to establish Nevis Securities, LLC, a registered Black-owned financial services company. Two years later, President George Bush appointed Hollis Executive Director of the US Virgin Islands Housing Authority. In 2007 Hollis was appointed by the Fulton County Board of Commissioners to serve on the Board of Directors for the Fulton-DeKalb Hospital Authority. He also chaired the Finance Committee of Grady Memorial Hospital.
Michael R. Hollis died on June 18, 2012, in Atlanta from a prolonged illness. He was 58 and survived by his wife, Dena Hollis.
In the Arena: The High-Flying Life of Air Atlanta Founder Michael Hollis
Michael Robinson Hollis was born in a fiercely segregated southern city that, by custom and even by law, relegated African Americans to the lower rungs of society. Whether through inadequacies in housing, education, health care, jobs, recreation or civil liberties, Black Atlantans in 1953 were deprived of the kinds of opportunities promised by the American creed. At one point during Michael’s childhood, the white political establishment erected a blockade – the infamous “Peyton Road Wall” – for the express purpose of separating Black and white Atlantans. So determined were the powers-that-be to keep it that way that they did not even bother to conceal their dread and fear of a Black majority population and even openly recruited Black elders’ assistance in fending off Black empowerment.
With so many roadblocks, people like Michael Hollis were not supposed to go far. But, even with the odds arrayed against him, he was preparing for a different destiny. In his modest but happy home on Atlanta’s west side, where most Black citizens were effectively warehoused by dint of draconian city ordinances and housing covenants, Michael thrived. Gifted with a bright mind, a curious nature and a mother who imbued him with self-confidence and faith, Michael excelled in school, began building strong relationships with influential and accomplished men, and demonstrated a precocious bent for pushing the envelope.
Even before the term was a staple of motivational speeches, “networking” was one of the success tools that Michael understood and mastered from his youth. Everyone expected Michael to go to Morehouse College, the historic and prestigious institution that has produced so many of the country’s prominent Black male leaders, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., activist and statesman Julian Bond and one of Michael’s mentors and friends, Maynard Jackson, Atlanta’s first black mayor. The Hollis home was just down the street from the Morehouse campus and Michael’s older brother, Julius, was a student there.
But, in a fateful break from tradition and expectation, Michael went to Dartmouth College, where he quickly distinguished himself as an assertive, confident, and audacious man-on-the-move. He so impressed John G. Kemeny, the then President of Dartmouth College, Kemeny made him his personal intern – an unprecedented appointment for an underclassman – and then extended the term from the customary one year to two. In a 1979 memoir, Dr. Kemeny’s wife predicted that Michael would one day run for president of the United States. “When Mike reaches that pinnacle―and he will,” she wrote, “I’ll vote for him.” His next stop was the University of Virginia School of Law, the alma mater of countless federal judges, members of Congress, and captains of American industry. As at Dartmouth, Michael was that rare sight on campus―a Black student. And, as at Dartmouth, he proved to be exceptional. With a Jewish classmate from Miami as his sidekick and collaborator, Michael dared to seek the presidency of the 30,000-member Law Student Division (LSD) of the American Bar Association, one of the largest student professional organizations in the world. Over fierce and contentious opposition, Michael and his friend outwitted, out-worked, and outmaneuvered their foes and Michael won the post. His pursuit of the LSD campaign and the Dartmouth appointment honed the boldness, determination and shrewdness that would make Michael renowned as a deal-making maestro.
There were signs of Michael’s exceptionalism along the way―a friendship with the then President Jimmy Carter, an appointment to the elite legal staff of the Three Mile Island Commission, and an executive position with Oppenheimer among them. However, it was Michael’s creation of Air Atlanta, a regional jet service aimed at business travelers, which set him apart from the pack of dynamic Black entrepreneurs who emerged in the mid-1970s and early 1980s as the result of new thinking and new policies on equal opportunity and diversity.
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Air Atlanta Nuances
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Curb side service
You'll be graciously greeted at the gate and checked in.
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Employees
High- quality business class services
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No RUNNING to the plane
You'll never have to run to the plane. Ride comfortably to and from your plane
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Luxury seating and gourmet foods!
Extra- large seats with lots of room. Beautiful hostesses will bring you a gourmet dinner and or drinks. They'll even bring you warm towels to clean your hands after your meal
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Air Atlanta special gates and check-in
Check-in is a breeze at the Air Atlanta Security gate and lobby area
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No bag check
Roll your bags into the bag area. No waiting and hoping that your bag will arrive safely.
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FEATURED PEOPLE
"Air Atlanta Inter-Generational Brain Trust: It took more than a village"
Michael R. Hollis was born in Atlanta Georgia and his ascendency and development as one this nation’s most innovative business entrepreneurs started with the launching of Air Atlanta, Inc., a $100 million luxury commercial airline ventured owned by an African American. Air Atlanta will forever define his courage and tenacity in the annuals of American business history.
Michael R. Hollis’ ascendency and development as an innovative business entrepreneur can be directly linked to the societal changes that happened as a result of the passage of The Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The City of Atlanta was the bedrock of the Civil and Human Rights Movement led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and countless other civil rights pioneers. With the historical passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the City of Atlanta was immediately transformed globally into “The Economic Promise Land” for communities of color.
During this period, America for the first time publicly recognized that it had caused irrevocable economic and educational harm to the aspirations of millions of its citizenry, simply based on the color of their skin. The passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 created cornerstones for the desegregation of public schools and colleges, as well as for the recalibration of this nation’s economic infrastructure, which had historically discriminated and denied communities of color accessibility to its supply chains.
As eloquently stated in the 2024 State of Black of America Report published by The National Urban League the economic gains made by color of communities as a result of passage of The Civil Rights Act of 1964, are even today being challenged and under vicious attacks by forces that would prefer to continue the false of narrative of “discounting” the economic contributions made by people of color, over the course, of 200 years in fostering America’s global economic ingenuity.
Maynard and company
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Family and friends
The team behind the vision
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News
Hollis Innovation Academy
Michael R. Hollis Innovation Academy
225 James P. Brawley Drive NW
Atlanta
GA
30314
404-802-8200
- Crew is such an integral part of EL.
- Crew for Hollis is a day-to-day, day in, day out, all day process.
- We start off every single day, implementing culture and crew for 30 minutes. It's just naturally embedded throughout every lesson, throughout every subject. We have Six Habits of Hollis: Creativity.
- Creativity! Perseverance.
- Persevere! Never give up. Self-discipline.
- [Teacher] Showing self-discipline, I like it.
- [Adella] Empathy, communication, collaboration.
- I won an award for collaboration. It changed by me growing out of my heart.
Hollis Innovation Academy
Inspiring Student Achievement in 3 Dimensions-- Case Study: Hollis Innovation Academy
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