This Sweet Safe Haven Was Home to MLK and the Civil Rights Movement

mural of john lewis
Via Flickr
Adè Hennis
June 27, 2025

In 1906, dozens of Atlanta’s Black residents were killed and injured, as white mobs pillaged Black businesses and homes. Survivors of the violence needed to be safe, and they found the perfect place.

They fled downtown to Auburn Avenue where they did their best to rebuild their lives. By 1956, there were so many Black businesses there that Forbes called it “the richest Negro street in the world.”

The civic leader John Wesley Dobbs nicknamed Auburn Ave “Sweet Auburn,” honoring the “sweet brown honey” that had made the community’s  success possible. Sweet Auburn was also the center of the Civil Rights Movement, where three generations of the King family championed justice and equality in their church and beyond.

Black prosperity is sweet, but Sweet Auburn’s real wealth has been its ability to be a safe haven for our people. Because if we don’t have each other,  what do we have?

Sweet Auburn shows that when we support our community we can build a future so sweet that racism can’t sour its impact.

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