For half a century, Atlanta’s Auburn Avenue embodied the brightest economic, spiritual and community beacon of the African American community. This was before the construction of the Downtown Connector, a 14-lane highway that scarred this historic district and reduced it, even today, to a shadow of its former glory.
Seeing the boarded-up buildings and vacant spaces that disfigure this avenue located east of downtown Atlanta, it is difficult to imagine that this street was once the pride of the black population of the southern United States.
In the first half of the 20th centurye century, despite the advent of the Jim Crow era and its segregationist policies, an entirely African-American bourgeoisie managed to prosper in this neighborhood called Sweet Auburn.
During this golden age, the economic and artistic elite converged on Auburn Avenue. The smartly dressed men adjusted their suits before entering the Rucker Building, which when it was built in 1904 became Atlanta’s first office space entirely owned by an African-American owner.
Some had a copy of theAtlanta Daily Worldthe Auburn Avenue daily that became, upon its creation in 1928, Atlanta’s first newspaper owned and edited by blacks.
Many unwinded in the evening at the most prominent cabaret in town. The Top Hat Club — which later became the Royal Peacock — welcomed the biggest names in African-American culture: Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway, Marvin Gaye, Ray Charles, Little Richard and Mohamed Ali were, among others, among the regulars.
On Sundays, the faithful went to the two historic churches in the area, Big Bethel and Ebenezer, to commune with a certain Martin Luther King Jr., a local boy who delivered his first sermons here — and sowed the seeds of friendship in Sweet Auburn. a revolution that culminated with the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964.
The Downtown Connector: beginning of decline
At that time, Auburn Avenue embodied the economic resilience of the African-American community despite a regime that worked to inferiorize it. In 1956, with the presence of Citizens Trust, the city’s first African-American bank, and two life insurance companies also founded by blacks, the Atlanta Life Insurance Company and Standard Life, the vitality of the the artery was such that the magazine Fortune referred to it as “the richest black street in the world.”
Less than a decade later, the Downtown Connector bisected the avenue, dealing a “killing blow” to the neighborhood, according to Daniel Henry, head of the Remerge studio, which uses art as a way to patch together Sweet Auburn’s frayed community fabric. .
“This highway is a horror that completely disfigures the district,” he laments. It was its construction that marked the decline of Sweet Auburn. »
Inaugurated in 1964, the immense snake of concrete and bitumen which still tears through the neighborhood was part of an ambitious highway network promoted by the Eisenhower government. The construction of the latter devastated many densely populated areas throughout the United States, in projects that the authorities euphemistically called “urban renewal”.
As soon as it was inaugurated, as soon as it became congested: the Downtown Connector went from 6 to 14 lanes in the 1980s. Today, the section is among the most congested in the United States, and Atlanta, with its incessant traffic jams, is ranked tenth place in the INRIX list of cities struggling with the most serious traffic problem in the country.
“It’s a drug zone”
If the highway that crosses the neighborhood is saturated, the sidewalks of Auburn Avenue, once busy, now appear deserted and abandoned to homelessness.
“It’s my 43e birthday today, says Ayesha Patrice Levitt on a porch on the thoroughfare. But I really don’t feel like celebrating. » Pregnant with twins, she explains, her only possessions are a few objects piled up pell-mell in her grocery basket. She lives and sleeps on the streets — one of hundreds who populate Sweet Auburn.
“This neighborhood is fucked up, it’s a drug zone, she emphasizes. Walk a little, and you will see: we are drug addicts, alcoholics, mentally ill. People are afraid of us because we are “black-skinned homeless people”. »
Atlanta has tried to restore luster to this district listed on the register of national historic districts, without succeeding in curbing the exodus of businesses and population for the benefit of the suburbs. The area continued to decline to the point where the city, host of the 1996 Olympics, publicly discouraged millions of tourists from visiting Sweet Auburn, burdened by crime and poverty.
Attempts at renewal
The establishment of a tram station in the heart of the district and the crowds generated by the monuments erected in memory of Martin Luther King Jr. have not succeeded in reversing this decline.
The White House, six decades after the inauguration of the Downtown Connector, is today striving to heal the urban wounds inherited from the past. The US Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg, launched in 2022 a program dedicated to reconnecting neighborhoods divided by these vast infrastructure projects, launched by administrations that are unscrupulous towards often deprived local populations.
“We cannot ignore a simple truth,” Mr. Buttigieg admitted. Some urban planning has directly destroyed vibrant communities, sometimes in a desire to reinforce segregation, sometimes in a direct effort to replace or eliminate black neighborhoods. »
This neighborhood is “fucked up”, it’s a drug zone. Walk a little, and you will see: we are drug addicts, alcoholics, mentally ill.
The exit, described as “ woke » by the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, nevertheless highlighted the devastation that these construction sites have caused in the social fabric of many African-American communities. Today, the few merchants who remain in Sweet Auburn are optimistic about the future.
“I had President (Bill) Clinton here in 1999,” says chef Sonya Jones, founder of the Sweet Auburn Bread Co. “He tasted this,” she adds, pointing to the proof dessert. biggest cravings that made it famous: its famous cheese and sweet potato cake.
Established in the neighborhood since 1997, she has often seen its downs — but also some ups. “I like it here. It’s not always easy, that’s for sure, but I’m starting to see businesses opening here and there. »
Jatrice Owens and his Atlanta Breakfast Club is one of them. Opened three years ago, it welcomes a trendy clientele hungry for lattes and hearty Southern cuisine. “It’s certain that we are in a period of transition,” explains the cook. We are emerging from a period of defeatism and carelessness. »
She notices a timid revival on the avenue. “A restaurant is going to open around the corner. An apartment building too: it will bring us people. » In this neighborhood that she chose for its rich history, however, the highway continues to darken the future.
“Until the city bury the Downtown Connector, I doubt the avenue will return to its former glory. It was the community that built Sweet Auburn and it was a white governor who destroyed it, she said of Marvin Griffin, the openly segregationist governor who approved the construction of the highway in the heart of the neighborhood. Today, it is up to the community to come together to make it prosper — as those who came before us did. »
This report was financed thanks to the support of the Transat-International Journalism Fund.The duty.
A previous version of this text was modified:Atlanta Daily World is Atlanta’s first black-owned and -edited newspaper.