A walk through the Sweet Auburn District is both stepping back into history and forward into the future of multicultural Atlanta. The center of African-American enterprise in Atlanta from the 1890s to 1950s, Auburn Avenue features the Auburn Avenue Research Library, the first African-American research center in the South; the Atlanta Life Insurance Co., founded in 1905 by former slave Alonzo Herndon; and the national headquarters of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The Sweet Auburn district also includes the four-block Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site, featuring a Visitors Center, with a short film on the civil rights leader and artifacts of Dr. King’s life; the civil rights leader’s birth home (501 Auburn Ave., above); his tomb at the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change; and both the traditional and new sanctuaries of Ebenezer Baptist Church, where King’s family has preached for three generations.
For a guided walking tour of the Sweet Auburn District, call the Atlanta Preservation Center at (404) 876-2041. The Friends of Sweet Auburn also organizes many special events and festivals in the district; for info, visit www.sweetauburn.com.
