Sweet Auburn Avenue

During the 1920s Harlem Renaissance, Auburn Avenue became the commercial center of Black Atlanta. It boasted the first black-owned life insurance company (Atlanta Life), the first Black daily newspaper (Atlanta Daily World), and the first Black-owned radio station (WERD) in the United States. In 1956 or 1957, Fortune Magazine named Auburn Avenue “The richest Negro street in America.”

Auburn was called “Wheat Street” until 1823, when white residents changed its name. Eventually Anglo-Americans moved out, and African-Americans moved in. The phrase “Sweet Auburn” was coined by John Wesley Dobbs, maternal grandfather of Atlanta’s first African-American mayor, Maynard Jackson. According to legend, he said that unlike other black streets, Auburn Avenue was not on the wrong side of the tracks. The Avenue was off of Peachtree Street, the White commercial district of Atlanta, an ideal location. In fact, another one of its nicknames was “Black Peachtree.”

Dobbs, the “Grand Master” of the Prince Hall Masons, was considered the “Godfather of Black Business” in Atlanta. He formed the Atlanta Negro Voters league and helped increase the number of Black voters from less than 2,000 in 1940 to more than 22,000 in the early 1950s. Equally important, he was an advisor to Martin Luther King, Jr., who was born and preached on the avenue alongside his father, Martin Luther King, Sr.

During Dobbs’s reign as the “Unofficial Mayor of Sweet Auburn” doctors, dentists, craftsmen, drug stores, flower shops, groceries, barbershops, beauty shops, dry cleaners, banks, insurance companies, restaurants, photography studios, churches, fraternal orders, hotels, and nightclubs all flourished on The Avenue. Famous acts such as Gladys Knight, B.B. King, The Four Tops, Little Richard, Cab Calloway, Aretha Franklin and Ray Charles performed at the Peacock Lounge. Nightlife sparkled with such a glow that folks dressed up just to walk down Sweet Auburn.

In the 1950s and the 1960s, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Ebenezer Baptist, Wheat Street Baptist, Big Bethel AME and Butler CME churches kept Auburn Avenue as a nexus of social activity and the Civil Rights Movement. Dr King was co-pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church. The powerful influence of Atlanta’s churches and Civil rights leadership was proven just after the assassination of Dr. King in Memphis. Ministers, the SCLC, and King Family were all unified and vocal in their statements to maintain calm around the city. Unlike most other cities in America with large Black populations, Atlanta did not suffer destructive and pointless riots. That calmness amidst the pain would pay huge dividends later, as Atlanta’s white leadership realized the economic advantages of trusting African Americans enough to share political power.