In the 1920's and 30's, the influential political and civic leader John Wesley Dobbs observed that Auburn Avenue was "paved in gold." Financial institutions, professionals, educators, entertainers and politicians found room to flourish on this one mile of Southern street. Since Dobb's time, countless momentous events have happened on Auburn Avenue, and many people have moved elsewhere. However, the historic buildings that remain within this once thriving community and the adjacent six centers of higher education all honor the resilience and tenacity of Americans who survived and thrived within the confines of extreme social and economic segregation for several centuries past. Although economically governed by the restrictive Jim Crow Laws, Sweet Auburn Avenue reached the height of its social influence from the 1920's through the 1940's. The buildings that survive today from that era reflect this energy. A passage from Where Peachtree Meets Sweet Auburn by Gary Pomerantz describes Auburn Avenue between 1924 and 1938, through the viewpoint of "Mayor" John Wesley Dobbs (also called "The Grand"): "Dobbs believed there was magic in Auburn Avenue, especially in that two-block stretch between Piedmont Avenue and Butler Street (now Jesse Hill Street). When Blacks spoke of Auburn, that's what they meant: the churches, clubs, barbershops, shoeshines, small businesses, restaurants and banks between the Rucker Building and the Yates and Milton Drugstore. Once it had been called Wheat Street, but in 1893 white residents successfully petitioned the city council to change it to Auburn Avenue, convinced it had a more stylish sound. By the 1930s some called Auburn the 'Black Peachtree' though, physically, that was a bit of a stretch since Peachtree wound north of the city and continued for many miles. In its entirety, Auburn Avenue ran little more than a mile and a half. Yet even as developer Hermon Perry triggered a housing boom for blacks on the west side, Auburn remained the spiritual center of black Atlanta. The three legged stool of black finance the Citizens Trust Bank (of which Dobbs was among the original directors), Mutual Federal Savings & Loan and Alonzo Herndon's Atlanta Life Insurance Company was located on Auburn. To walk the Avenue on any summer evening was to experience the vitality of black life in the city: the sounds of ragtime from the Top Hat, the smell of fried chicken from Ma Sutton's and the constant hum of animated street chatter. It became the place for black dreamers. You knew you had arrived on the Avenue once you had your own pulpit or your own cornerstone. Henry Rucker, Alonzo Herndon and Benjamin J. Davis already had erected buildings on Auburn and soon Dobbs would have his." "Sweet Auburn Avenue" is what the "Grand" Dobbs began to call it, in honor of the timeless Oliver Goldsmith poem from 1770, "The Deserted Village:" Sweet Auburn! loveliest village of the plain, Where health and plenty cheer'd the laboring swain...

In the mid-1980s, signs of new life on Auburn Avenue began to surface. Charles Johnson moved to Atlanta from Philadelphia in 1984. "I didnÍt know the history of the street, but I learned about its culture and closeness quickly when I went to a dry cleaners to get some pants pressed," says Johnson, president of the Sweet Auburn Business and Improvement Association. "I asked the proprietor for a claim ticket. He told me I didnÍt need a claim ticket. HeÍd remember who I was. Later, I learned that it was that kind of trust and friendship that helped create the personality of Sweet Auburn." Johnson visited the Odd Fellows Building, lamented about its possibilities as a restored structure and then looked west on Auburn. "I said to myself, this would be a great place for a festival." Now, in its 13th year, the Sweet Auburn Festival has annually drawn crowds in excess of 500,000. In March 1985, Mtamanika Youngblood, her husband, attorney George Howell and their then 4-week-old daughter moved into the Auburn Avenue District, a conscious decision, she says, to live in an in-town Black community. "All this history, this culture, all this past entertainment history was kind of lost. What a shame," Youngblood says remembering when she moved to Atlanta from New York City in January 1977. "But, by looking at the buildings, I got a sense of prosperity and heritage that needed to be unfolded or brought out." Feeling the need to help preserve history, Youngblood left her management position with BellSouth in 1993 and became the Historic District Development CorporationÍs first full-time executive director. Youngblood found plenty of challenges to overcome while trying to pump new economic life into Auburn Avenue and the surrounding area. Restoring homes, enhancing apartment complexes and luring homeowners into those areas was the easy part of the puzzle;HDDC had been doing that since 1980 and with considerable success. The harder part was Auburn AvenueÍs commercial district and the skepticism from many of the current merchants and landowners. The skepticism was legitimate. Talk of restoring Auburn Avenue had been discussed since the late 1970Ís. In 1987, $3.5 million in federal grant money was identified for Auburn Avenue revitalization, but disagreements between merchants and political leaders on a workable marketing theme for the area and the city administrationÍs preoccupation with reviving Underground Atlanta pushed plans for Auburn Avenue aside.. Initially, HDDC and SABIA split -- HDDC handled residential development, and SABIA took on commercial renaissance. But, they are now working together to bring revitalization of the entire area to fruition. Working independently, the SABIA was unable to make progress on the commercial portion of the process. Controversy over the issue was fueled by skepticism among some Auburn Avenue merchants about JohnsonÍs role as president of SABIA. But, with the commercial phase of Auburn stymied with the influx of visitors to the 1996 Olympics, the merchantsÍ association reached out to HDDC. "About a year ago, we became the planning and development arm for [The Sweet] Auburn [Business Improvement Association]," says Youngblood. "They recognized they didnÍt have the developmental expertise." With the team firmly in place, challenges to create a new Auburn Avenue still exist. Tourists still avoid the avenue because they think the street is crime-ridden, despite the location of a police precinct at Auburn and Bell Street (however, the precinct closes each night at 9). Johnson believes the precinct and improved walking patrols have run the prostitutes off the street and reduced the instances of panhandling and vagrancy. Bus tours that carry one million visitors to the King Center still take a route that bypasses 90 percent of the businesses located on Auburn Avenue. And, the buses which do use the street as the conduit to the King Visitors Center rarely stop. HDDC is also fighting hard to maintain Auburn AvenueÍs spirit as the avenue of Black-owned business and has launched a feasibility study that will give them some guidance as to what types of business will work on the street in the new millenium. "The 1940s and 50s Auburn was one thing, but what will work in 1999, 2001, or 2010? The realities of the market are different." But, Johnson is convinced that despite these challenges, the street is on the verge of an economic boom. "IÍm excited. ItÍs not a matter of when but how fast it will happen," says Johnson.

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 a symbol of the 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."

The largest Martin Luther King Holiday celebration and march is held every year along Auburn Avenue. It is the street where Dr. King was born, grew up, preached and is buried. This is the location of the MLK, Jr., National Park. But Sweet Auburn is so much more than that. It is the center of African American, business, social, educational and religious life. It was and remains, in many ways, an important center of the civil rights movement. A 1940's Forbes magazine article called Auburn Avenue the "richest Negro Street in the World."

The Largest street festival in the southeast is held on Auburn Avenue each spring. 500,000 people from across the country come home to Sweet Auburn to celebrate its rich history and heritage.