Passage II

A Stroll Through History on Sweet Auburn

In the early 1900s, when Auburn Avenue in Atlanta, Georgia, became an interesting location for African American business and culture. Jim Crow laws forced segregation of blacks and whites in Atlanta, resulting in the confinement of African American homes and businesses to a small downtown area in the Old Fourth Ward. Over time, African American businesses congregated in this ward besides approximately one and a half miles of Auburn Avenue. The area's prosperity and autonomy of the area led to the neighborhood being known as "Sweet Auburn." (21) Three financial companies provided the base for the rise of the black middle class in this area of Atlanta. Alonzo Herndon, a former slave became a successful barber, founded Atlanta Life Insurance. By its one hundredth anniversary in 2005, the enterprise was worth over 200 million dollars. In 1911, a second black insurance company, Standard Life Insurance, was formed by Heman Perry. Ten years later, Perry founded the Citizens Trust Bank, which offered loans to African American entrepreneurs. Supported by these institutions, small businesses helped Sweet Auburn emerge as a center of black commerce.

In the 1920s and '30s, more than one hundred black-owned businesses, having found their home in the vibrant culture of Sweet Auburn. The avenue flourished the legendary soul food restaurants Ma Sutton's, you could eat this food at Hawk’s Dinette. Entertainment venues such as the Top Hat Club (later the Royal Peacock) hosted famous performers.

The Atlanta Daily World, for instance, the first successful black-owned US daily newspaper, also began on Auburn Avenue.

Sweet Auburn’s designation:in 1976 as a National Historic Landmark resulted from the neighborhood's cultural strengths and business assets as well as its social values. Civic organizations and historic churches, such as Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. preached with his father—all contributed—to establishing Auburn Avenue as one of the most important streets in US history.