Atlanta Through the Archives
Sweet Auburn
Summary
How city officials systematically destroyed Sweet Auburn, the thriving
black
neighborhood and economic district.
By the time HOLC agents began creating Atlanta’s redlining maps, Auburn Avenue had established
itself not only as a major economic district, but also as the city's black Mecca. Containing 142
black businesses and professionals as well as a fashionable residential district, the Sweet Auburn
neighborhood was renowned as the heart of black opportunity in the South. Despite the neighborhood’s
clear economic viability, in 1931, HOLC agents designated the Sweet Auburn area as grade D:
hazardous for investment. This rating was exemplary of white officials’ plans for the neighborhood:
from the 1940s to the 1970s, city officials targeted Sweet Auburn for relentless disruption, the two
largest instigators of which were the construction of the Atlanta expressway and the Butler Street
Urban Renewal project.
Construction of the highway occurred throughout the 1950s, physically bisecting the Sweet Auburn
community while officials provided little to no replacement housing for those displaced by the
project. The neighborhood’s decline was only exasberated when, in 1957, officials began plans for
urban renewal along Auburn Avenue, allocating Federal funds of over $21 million towards ‘slum
clearance’ in the area. In the years following development, thousands of black businesses and
families were forcibly removed from the Sweet Auburn neighborhood. Displaced residents faced moving
in a city which was increasingly becoming segregated by a lack of affordable housing. Throughout the
1960s, a mass residential migration towards the WestSide of Atlanta occurred, all the while white
communities pushed back against the influx of black families, and city officials delayed
construction of new housing sites. By the 1970s, what once was the Sweet Auburn neighborhood was
nearly entirely absorbed by the expansion of the central business district. In 1976, the
neighborhood was designated a National Historic Landmark, and since then, the Historic District
Development Corporation, “has built and rehabilitated more than 110 single-family homes and more
than 50 units of affordable rental housing” and now focuses on renewal of the neighborhood’s
commercial district.
SOURCES:
atlpp0206, Planning Atlanta Planning Publications Collection, Georgia State University Library.
https://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/digital/collection/PlanATL/id/16555/rec/13
atlpp0208, Planning Atlanta Planning Publications Collection, Georgia State University Library.
https://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/digital/collection/PlanATL/id/41894/rec/6
atlpm0020, Planning Atlanta City Planning Maps Collection, Georgia State University Library.
https://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/digital/collection/PlanATL/id/1649/rec/1
Sweet Auburn Neighborhood Project oral history interviews, Archives Division, Auburn Avenue Research
Library on African-American Culture and History, Fulton County Library System.