Athens’ old City Stockade, perhaps fittingly, finds itself trapped. In limbo, in obscurity, the building is now, in a way, subject to the confinement it was meant to impose.  Sequestered away in the farthest back corner of Normaltown in a no-man’s land squeezed against the Loop, the stockade and its story have been largely locked away. Unlike so many of the notable Athens buildings that seem to insist they have a story to tell, the old stockade appears stolid and mute. But the stockade tells us a story of Athens—a story of the city’s growth and modernization, a story of bitter oppression and the struggle for freedom.  For the better part of the 20th century, the stockade was a jail. […]