Sweet Auburn Avenue

1893-Present

This district was home to Atlanta Mutual, founded by black millionaire Alonzo Herndon and also to the Rucker Building, which was the first Black-owned office building in the area and was built by Henry A. Rucker. Additionally, Sweet Auburn was the birthplace of what is still the nation’s longest running Black newspaper, The Atlanta Daily World. Sweet Auburn Avenue, 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.”  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.” Sources (http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org, wikipedia.com)