Atlanta's King's 'Sweet Auburn' recovering after years of decline

Community members walk along "Sweet Auburn," birthplace of Martin Luther King Jr.

January 17, 1998
Web posted at: 8:05 p.m. EDT (2005 GMT)

ATLANTA (AP) -- Huddled close on a cold, gray day along Auburn Avenue are layers of a family who have seen the rise and fall and rise of the fabled street where Martin Luther King Jr. was born.

Ruth Simmons grew up here during segregation, when the street bustled with black businesses. Her brother's granddaughter, Portia Scott, came of age during the civil rights movement, when desegregation brought near ruination. Another grandniece, Alexis Scott-Reeves, now works amid decaying buildings and construction sites that local leaders hope will become tourist attractions.

The three women point to King when reviewing the avenue's incarnations.

"Dr. King's legacy, if you will, is the paradox of Auburn Avenue. Desegregation, which we sorely needed, led to a fracturing of the community," Scott-Reeves said. "What's happened has been good overall. But for dear Auburn Avenue, it's left a chink in its shining armor."

Auburn Avenue was dubbed "Sweet Auburn" by early civil rights leader John Wesley Dobbs because of the opportunities it afforded blacks even under strict segregation laws.

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"It was the yellow brick road for black dreamers in the South in the 1930s and '40s," said author Gary M. Pomerantz, whose book "Where Peachtree Meets Sweet Auburn" chronicles Atlanta's racial, social and political history.

It was a place where blacks could own businesses, get a good education at nearby black colleges and prosper. It was a street that had something for everyone.

"You have to understand, there wasn't a lot of places for blacks in those days," Simmons said. "Once you hit Auburn Avenue, it was just like going home. People knew you and greeted you by your name. That was something, then."

The two-mile street offered black-owned nightclubs where musical greats such as Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington performed. There were big churches, fancy restaurants, clean hotels and a slew of shops, from beauty salons to clothing stores to funeral parlors.

"Auburn Avenue was a living lab for Martin Luther King Jr.'s dreams," said Dobbs' grandson, former Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson.

It wasn't until the 1960s that Auburn Avenue gained recognition among whites nationwide as King's birthplace -- then as his final resting place.

That was also when the street began to decline.

"Black people were able to begin to move and work where they wanted to. They left Auburn Avenue," Scott said.

By the early 1970s, businesses were closing, old buildings were torn down and residents had all but disappeared. Although many former residents returned on Sundays for church, they stopped shopping there.

"It turned into a decaying memorial to a bygone era," Pomerantz said. "It was a necessary though regrettable price for freedom."

As businesses closed, Jackson devised a revitalization plan, which tried to lure people back to the neighborhood by promoting its historic vitality and its access to downtown shopping. But for a time, Auburn Avenue was seen as too far gone to be worth the risk.

"You've got to change attitudes about investing in black neighborhoods," Jackson said. "It's beginning to catch on."

In the 1980s, remaining business owners thought that construction of the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site and the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change around King's birthplace and his tomb would bolster renewal.

Although they are the city's most popular attractions, they are nothing but a quick stop and visitors don't linger.

"The King legacy is one that is geared toward a different market -- the tourist market," said Timothy Crimmins, an urban history professor at Georgia State University. "Somehow spinning off of that is the key for Auburn Avenue."

The King family declined to be interviewed for this article, but Simmons recalls King standing on the steps of the Atlanta Daily World newspaper building, debating with her brother, publisher C.A. Scott, about the avenue's future.

"The greatness of Sweet Auburn was the people. King stood on the shoulders of all these men who worked down here," she said.

Scott-Reeves recently returned to work on the avenue as publisher of the Daily World. Once the largest black daily in the country, the paper now publishes only twice a week and is struggling with a dropping circulation. Still, she sees her return as symbolizing a growing movement by blacks across the country to reinvest in their communities.

"There is a re-emergence by blacks ... a sense of commitment to developing economically the black community," she said.

Every day she navigates her way down a street of faded storefronts interspersed with well-tended churches and fenced-off building sites that will someday be shiny glass office buildings.

The people who walk the street are as diverse as its buildings -- bums and businessmen, tourists and vendors.

"Dr. King was one of those particular human beings ... who could see a universality," she said. "Today, there are blacks, whites, Hispanics, just everyone walking along Auburn Avenue."

Jackson also believes the avenue is on the rebound. He said he plans to move one of his securities firms to the avenue and set up business -- not to try to recapture the past, but to work for the future.

"It can never again become what it was," Jackson said, "because you would have to return to the days of segregation."

Related sites:

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• Martin Luther King Jr.
• Martin Luther King, Jr. Directory

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