Heyday of Auburn Avenue

In Atlanta's Old Fourth Ward, the community centered on the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Non-Violent Social Change, the King Birth Home, and Ebenezer Baptist Church. The Great Fire of 1917 destroyed hundreds of homes there and displaced thousands of African Americans, many of whom moved to the Atlanta University area farther west. Yet from the 1880s, when Wesley Redding became the first of his race to buy a home on this section of Auburn Avenue, until the 1950s, the neighborhood was home to middle- and upper-class African Americans. Auburn Avenue served as both the Main Street of Black Atlanta and a principal link to downtown and the city's west side, and the heart of the African American community rested there, where many spiritual, social, and professional needs could be met.

Atlanta, Georgia · United States