Black History Attractions In Atlanta
Atlanta’s African-American history is rich and varied, with many ways to explore the city’s Black heritage. Broadly speaking, historical and heritage sites fall into two main categories: tourist attractions that address the history and culture of African-Americans; and historic buildings, significant sites, and broader heritage areas.
Atlanta’s Black heritage sites include some of the most significant Civil Rights-era sites in the country, including a National Historical Park dedicated to the legacy of Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. Two specific African-American heritage neighborhoods, Sweet Auburn and West Atlanta, were also home to many of the people and institutions involved in the movement.
Besides the Martin Luther King National Historical Park, Atlanta’s other main African-American heritage attraction is the Center for Civil and Human Rights, a new museum focused around the American Civil Rights Movement. Other attractions include a Black-owned and built historic house museum, the Herndon Home, and several collections of African-American and diaspora art.
See also:
– Atlanta museums and historic houses
– Art museums in Atlanta
– Nature and outdoors attractions in and near Atlanta
– Atlanta events by month: January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December
Key Sights/Highlights
Martin Luther King, Jr National Historical Park
450 Auburn Avenue NE, Atlanta, GA 30312
404-331-5190
Website
The Martin Luther King, Jr National Historical Park, situated east of Atlanta’s Sweet Auburn Historic District, is one of the city’s most popular attractions, dedicated to the life and achievements of Dr King.
The site’s Visitor Center outlines the history of the Civil Rights movement through exhibits and film. Guided tours of the Martin Luther King Birth Home, in which King was born and spent much of his childhood, are available several times per day. You can also see the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, at which both King and his father preached.
The rest of the site, comprising the International Civil Rights Walk of Fame, Historic Fire Station No 6, and the King Center, is open for self-guided visits. Admission to all sites and the Birth Home tour is free.
Center For Civil And Human Rights
100 Ivan Allen, Jr Boulevard NW, Atlanta, GA 30313
678-999-8990
Website
Atlanta’s other major Black heritage attraction is the Center for Civil and Human Rights, which concentrates on the African-American Civil Rights movement in the context of the broader history of civil rights movements globally.
Exhibitions focus on the life and work of Martin Luther King, Jr; the work of American Civil Rights activists; and the global human rights movement, alongside other temporary and special exhibits.
Sweet Auburn Historic District
Auburn Avenue, the mile-long centerpiece of Atlanta’s Sweet Auburn Historic District, was once at the heart of the city’s African-American community. Auburn Avenue was one of the nation’s foremost Black business districts and one of the wealthiest too, developed from the late 19th century into the early 20th century in response to the exclusion and discrimination encountered by African-Americans in Atlanta’s other, white-dominated business and residential areas.
Auburn Avenue was home to many Black businesses including banks and insurance companies, the offices of the Atlanta Daily World, and three prominent churches, many of which survive to this day.
Civil Rights sites include the first offices of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference at the Savoy Hotel, formerly at 239 Auburn Avenue, and of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, at 197 and 135 Auburn Avenue.
Other attractions include the APEX Museum, which examines history from an African-American perspective, including exhibits on local history and the development of Auburn Avenue; and the Municipal Market in Sweet Auburn, a historic city market first established in 1918 on land cleared by the Great Atlanta Fire of 1917. The market building (erected in 1924) was originally segregated: whites shopped inside the market, while Blacks could only shop at the curb outside, giving the market its historic local name, the Curb Market.
Today, the market has moved indoors, and is popular for its variety of food stalls and restaurants, with baked goods, fresh meat, seafood, produce, and other products available too. Open Monday-Saturday, 8am-5pm.
Tours & Events
The annual Sweet Auburn SpringFest, held in the Auburn Avenue district in May, is one of the largest outdoor festivals in the southeast, with music, food, and family entertainment. Admission is free.
In fall is the Sweet Auburn Music Fest, another big event attended by thousands, offering several genres of music, food, arts and culture, and free admission.
The Atlanta Preservation Center gives guided walks of the Sweet Auburn district, available by arrangement.
West Atlanta
West Atlanta is centered around the campuses of a cluster of five historically-Black Atlanta colleges (since merged) founded in the years after the close of the Civil War: Atlanta (1865), Clark (1869), Morris Brown (1881), Spelman (1881) and Morehouse (1867).
Obtaining the education denied to them during the days of enslavement and in the decades that followed was one of the foremost goals of African-Americans across the South. The colleges, originally formed to provide junior education and teacher training, later expanded into higher education, and became important agents of racial uplift and centers of the 20th-century Civil Rights movement.
The colleges have beautiful campus grounds and architecture, and there are also two galleries specializing in African-American and diaspora art: the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art and the Clark Atlanta University Art Museum.
Other Black heritage sites in West Atlanta include the Herndon Home and Hammonds House Museum. Wren’s Nest, the former home of author Joel Chandler Harris, also explores aspects of African-American storytelling traditions.
The Herndon Home is the former residence of Atlanta’s first African-American millionaire, Alonzo Franklin Herndon, who was born enslaved shortly before the Civil War. The house (remarkably for the time) was designed by a female architect, Herndon’s first wife, Adrienne McNeil Herndon. The Greek Revival mansion was completed in 1910.
Hammonds House Museum, located inside the former home of prominent Atlanta physician Dr Otis Thrash Hammonds (1929-1985), displays works of art by people of the African diaspora, centered around Dr Hammonds’ own collection.