Sweet Auburn Walk

Before desegregation, Auburn Avenue and nearby streets formed a self-contained Black community in the South where Black residents could move through daily life free from racial harassment while operating and patronizing restaurants, markets, barbershops, dry goods stores, doctors' offices, theaters, and nightclubs. Along Auburn, its cross streets, and a few parallel streets, they also established churches, banks, funeral homes, newspapers, insurance companies, fraternal organizations, and their homes. The neighborhood became so rich with opportunities for advancement that John Wesley Dobbs, inspired by an Oliver Goldsmith poem, gave it the name Sweet Auburn, and he said its three keys to liberation were ballots, bucks, and books.

Atlanta, Georgia · United States