Atlanta Through the Archives

Vine City (1917 - 1989)

Summary

After the Great Atlanta Fire of 1917, residents began to move into the Vine City area. The City of Atlanta began numerous public housing projects as a response to the growing population, but failed to properly maintain the properties. Residents protest against the substandard living conditions, including Martin Luther King, Jr.. In the 1980s, Vine City began to face a declining population and increasing number of empty public housing units.

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(1917) The Great Atlanta Fire of 1917 burns through Old Fourth Ward, displacing over 10,000 people. Black residents move further west along Simpson Road (today’s Joseph E. Boone Boulevard) and settle in the English Avenue/Vine City area. As black families attempt to move north of Boone Blvd., white residents cause violence and bombings.

(1934) “The outstanding success of University Homes was due to the fact that University Homes was made of a highly intelligent board of directors and an educational group, people who had been in education for years and people who considered housing to be a part of good education.
“I might’ve joined [Mr. Hope] on a couple trips to Washington, helping him do what he needed to do. But you must understand that the white project picked up and carried Mr. Hope along knowing they might explain to Washington the needs of Negroes generally.” -Lorimer D. Milton, Atlanta businessman and banker, hired by John Hope (president at time of Morehouse College) to head Department of Economics and Business Administration, later on Board of Directors of University Homes.

(1937) (before University Homes is built, same area near Chestnut Road) “It was a kind of rough neighborhood before they put the [University Homes] in. All down here, they used to call it Beaver Slide and it was rough. It was really rough down here…People did anything they wanted to do, they shoot crap into the street, and if you come along walking you'd better walk out of the street and not try to go through them.” -Clara Render, resident.

(1938) “No one thought it was necessary to hire a [landscape architect] on a salary…to keep up the entire grounds of a building…the Housing Authority was going to see that [Clark Howell Homes] was done but it was so alien to the usual thinking around the city…” She says City Hall was the main opposition to hiring landscape architects for these public housing projects. -Edith Henderson, female landscape architect planning and designing team of Clark Howell Homes.

(1967) Spelman College economics professor Marcia L. Halvorsen publishes her project “An Analysis…on Vine City…a Negro Slum Ghetto.” Her study finds only 20% of the homes are owned by their residents and over 30% of families are paying mortgages—but these are the families considered more “well off” than the rest of Vine City. A resident says “we do the best we can and that is all that can be done—we just never know what will happen.”
An interviewer says “to me the house is in terrible condition. [The resident] is very satisfied with the house. It is clean in the sense that she has swept and dusted plus straighted it up; but the house needs painting, replastering, and a plumber.”
54% of families interviewed had lived in Vine City for five years or longer, so there is a strong sense of community with the long-term residents. More are “afraid to complain about their housing from fear of having to move or…facing a higher rent.”

(1974) Lyndon A. Wade sends Mayor Maynard H. Jackson a letter about the establishment of a new Neighborhood Improvement Program. Under the Atlanta Urban League, NIP would focus on Vine City and south Atlanta, establishing community parks and gardens, refurbishing public school facilities, and working with the mayor’s office for sanitation and housing concerns.

(1978) The Department of Housing and Urban Development denies the city of Atlanta’s application for a 300-housing unit under the Section Eight Program because it does not meet the Site and Neighborhood Standards criteria that 1) the site has the utilities to accommodate residents and 2) the site is a racially-mixed area and increases the minority-to-majority ratio. It is found that the federal law prohibits housing development funds for areas of heavy minority concentration. The property does not meet the “good market area” standards.
<< /br> (1989) Vine City starts to face a 12% decline in the total of housing units, translating to a whole devaluation of the black neighborhood. Vine City has a 56% increase in vacant units. Black residents continue renting homes from the difficulty of receiving loans for home purchasing.

SOURCES:

Urban Collage, Inc. 2006. “English Avenue: Community Redevelopment Plan Update.” https://web.archive.org/web/20100710225129/http://www.atlantaga.gov/client_resources/government/planning/english%20ave/section%201.pdf.

Interview of L.D. Milton by E. Bernard West, “Oral history interview of L.D. Milton,” 1978, MSS 637.102.001, Living Atlanta oral history recordings, Atlanta History Center, Atlanta, Georgia.

Interview of Clara Render by E. Bernard West, “Oral history interview of Clara Render,” 1978, MSS 637.122.001, Living Atlanta oral history recordings, Atlanta History Center, Atlanta, Georgia.

Interview of Edith Henderson by Clifford M. Kuhn, “Oral history interview of Edith Henderson,” 1978, MSS 637.069.001, Living Atlanta oral history recordings, Atlanta History Center, Atlanta, Georgia.

Halvorsen, Marcia L. “An Analysis and Interpretation of Data on the Social Characteristics of Residents of “Vine City” - A Negro Slum Ghetto Within the City of Atlanta, Georgia,” 1967, 0000-0000-0000-0044, Box 100, folder 3, Vivian Wilson Henderson Papers, Robert W. Woodruff Library of the Atlanta University Center, Inc. Repository, Atlanta, Georgia, https://radar.auctr.edu/islandora/object/auc.044%3A0184?search=vine%2520city.

Letter from Lyndon A. Wade to Mayor Maynard H. Jackson about the Neighborhood Improvement Program, 1974, 0000-0000-0000-0025, box 121, folder 3, Atlanta Urban League Papers, Robert W. Woodruff Library of the Atlanta University Center, Inc. Repository, Atlanta, Georgia, https://radar.auctr.edu/islandora/object/auc.025%3A1023?search=vine%2520city.

Hanson, Camillus M. 1979, “An Investigation of Selected Project Activities Carried Out by the Bureau of Housing and Physical Development in the Community and Human Development Programming of the City of Atlanta,” Master’s thesis, Atlanta University.

Young, Kurt B. 1991, “Institutional Racism, Redlining, and the Decline of Six Atlanta Communities,” thesis, University of Florida.