Extending less than two miles eastward from Peachtree Street, Auburn Avenue was the commercial, cultural, and spiritual center of African American life in Atlanta prior to the civil rights movement.

“Sweet Auburn” boasted a concentration of Black-owned businesses, entertainment venues, and churches that was unrivaled elsewhere in the South. Its bustling retail trade and wealthy business owners earned the street a national reputation for African American finance and entrepreneurial zeal. In 1956 Fortune magazine memorably described Auburn Avenue as “the richest Negro street in the world.”

Sweet Auburn
Sweet Auburn
Courtesy of Georgia Department of Economic Development.

Sweet Auburn’s Golden Era

Originally called Wheat Street, the road was renamed in 1893 at the request of white petitioners who believed Auburn Avenue had a more cosmopolitan sound. During the next two decades, as restrictive Jim Crow legislation was codified into law, the city’s African American population became confined to the area between downtown and Atlanta University and to neighborhoods on the city’s east side, known today as the Old Fourth Ward. It was during this period that Auburn Avenue first achieved prominence as a commercial corridor and became home to the city’s emerging Black middle class.

Although composed mostly of small businesses, Auburn Avenue was also home to what historian Gary Pomerantz describes as Atlanta’s “three-legged stool of Black finance.” The first of these institutions was founded by Alonzo Herndon, a freedman who became the city’s first Black millionaire. After earning a modest fortune as the owner of a barbershop on Peachtree Street, Herndon founded the Atlanta Life Insurance Company in 1905. Six years later an enterprising Texan named Heman Perry formed a second Black insurance company, Standard Life. Citizens Trust Bank formed the third leg of the city’s Black financial stool, extending credit to Black homeowners and entrepreneurs who were underserved by the city’s white lending institutions. Because Auburn Avenue’s financial institutions amounted to a consolidation of African American wealth unique for its time, Black Atlantans referred to the street as “Sweet Auburn.” Coined by John Wesley Dobbs, a civic leader and the neighborhood’s unofficial “mayor,” the name reflected the avenue’s prominence as a national center of Black commerce.

Atlanta Life Insurance
Atlanta Life Insurance
Courtesy of Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

But Auburn Avenue was not simply a place to do business. Black Atlantans worshipped at Auburn’s many churches, including Ebenezer Baptist Church, where three generations of Martin Luther King Jr.’s family were pastors, and Big Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church; dined at the legendary Ma Sutton’s; and spent late nights listening to ragtime at the famous Top Hat Club (later the Royal Peacock). The National Association for the Advancement for Colored People (NAACP), the Odd Fellows, the Masons, and the National Urban League maintained offices on Auburn Avenue, which was also home to the nation’s first successful Black-owned daily newspaper, the Atlanta Daily World. Whether for work or play, Auburn Avenue was the center of African American life in Atlanta.

Royal Peacock
Royal Peacock
Courtesy of Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Civil Rights Era and Beyond

Ironically,  Auburn’s civic activism led to its undoing. As the NAACP and local voting-rights organizations, from their Sweet Auburn offices, lobbied state and local governments for an end to segregation, and as native son Martin Luther King Jr., who was born at 501 Auburn Avenue, led the crusade for civil rights before a national audience, the street began its steep decline. With the legal barriers to integration removed, many Auburn shopkeepers moved their businesses to other areas of the city, and residents began migrating to Atlanta’s west side. At the same time the street was bisected by the construction of the Downtown Connector. Once vital and vibrant, the community’s fabric began to tear as Sweet Auburn fell victim to disinvestment and neglect. “It turned into a decaying memorial to a bygone era,” observes Gary Pomerantz, “a necessary though regrettable price for freedom.”

Martin Luther King Jr. Birthplace
Martin Luther King Jr. Birthplace
Image from Wally Gobetz

Despite repeated attempts at renewal, Auburn Avenue remains a model of urban blight. A revitalization plan undertaken by Atlanta mayor Maynard Jackson in the 1970s failed to stem the neighborhood’s decline, and his successors have not made a sustained commitment to the neighborhood’s welfare. Auburn’s designation as a national historic landmark in 1976 and the construction of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change and the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site in the 1980s encouraged hopes that the neighborhood might be revitalized, but those expectations have gone unfulfilled. While these sites are among the largest attractions in the city, few of the more than 600,000 annual visitors (as of 2005) have ventured farther down the block for dining or entertainment.

Past failures notwithstanding, residents and advocates have not given up on Sweet Auburn. In 1984 civil rights leader Hosea Williams founded the Sweet Auburn Heritage Festival, which offers entertainment, food, art, and children’s activities along Auburn Avenue each year. As of 2006, a $45 million redevelopment plan to create thousands of square feet of retail space and hundreds of condominiums, spearheaded by the historic Big Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, suggests that the community is poised for renewal. Moreover, the area has been designated a “tax allocation district,” meaning that potential developments would enjoy municipal financial support. While Sweet Auburn’s future remains uncertain, its supporters believe that it is prepared to regain its former glory.

Sweet Auburn Festival
Sweet Auburn Festival
Courtesy of Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
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A More Perfect Union

The New Georgia Encyclopedia is supported by funding from A More Perfect Union, a special initiative of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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Sweet Auburn

Sweet Auburn

The Sweet Auburn neighborhood was the heart of the Black residential and business community in the first part of the twentieth century. Pictured in the foreground is an administrative office of the National Park Service, which maintains the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site in the neighborhood.

Atlanta Life Insurance

Atlanta Life Insurance

The old Atlanta Life Insurance building, pictured in 2005, is boarded up on Auburn Avenue. Established by Alonzo Herndon in 1905, Atlanta Life was one of three financial institutions, all headquartered in the Sweet Auburn district, that served the Black middle class in Atlanta before the civil rights movement.

Royal Peacock

Royal Peacock

The Royal Peacock, a club located in Atlanta's Sweet Auburn historic district, was formerly known as the Top Hat Club, one of the city's premier African American music venues early in the twentieth century.

Martin Luther King Jr. Birthplace

Martin Luther King Jr. Birthplace

The birthplace of Martin Luther King Jr. in Atlanta is one of the many historic properties that J. W. Robinson has worked to restore.

Image from Wally Gobetz

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Sweet Auburn Festival

Sweet Auburn Festival

Visitors enjoy the activities offered at the Sweet Auburn Heritage Festival, held each year in the Auburn Avenue historic district. The festival was founded in 1984 by civil rights leader Hosea Williams.