Focused Community Strategies
FCS Team

FCS Team

FCS Team

FCS Team

Remembering Brownsville: Honoring Our Neighborhood History

Leete Hall at Gammon Theological Seminary in Brownsville is now the main building of Carver High School.

On Sunday, September 23rd, police marched in and arrested 250 black men in South Atlanta. These men had gathered to discuss how to protect their community. They had armed themselves. Miles away, police had caught wind of the gathering and panicked at the thought of an impending retaliatory attack. They stormed the neighborhood to disarm and disable the group. A shoot-out ensued when they arrived. In the midst of the gunfire, a white police officer was killed. And just like that, the South Atlanta men were quickly rounded up and carted off for booking. It was one of many scenes of chaos and injustice unfurling across Atlanta during the race massacre in 1906.

This story, and the larger narrative about the Atlanta Race Massacre, wasn’t included in the history curriculum of Atlanta Public Schools until 2006, one hundred years after its occurrence. And South Atlanta was Brownsville back then. For this year’s black history month, we wanted to be sure to share it with our friends and neighbors across the city. At FCS, we’re fixated on neighboring, dignity, and development. Just as we listen to our neighbors and partners, we want to listen to what history has to tell us about South Atlanta today.

The story of the Brownsville arrests reminds us of the systemic inequalities that hamper our neighbors today. South Atlanta has a number of assets, but many of its challenges emerge from historic realities. We need to tell the truth to conduct our work effectively. 

One of the big truths hidden in this horrifying episode of our community is that South Atlanta has a history of being a thriving community, a center for action and leadership. When South Atlanta was founded as “Brownsville” in the late 1800s, it grew into one of Atlanta’s hubs of black education, thought leadership, and culture. When we partner to revitalize the community, we do so understanding that we’re reclaiming a historical truth. Our neighborhood has already flourished.

Clark University designed and created the Brownsville Neighborhood with the campus anchoring the northern tip of the community in about 1883. The university quickly drew in businesses, religious leaders, academics, and young people. Its affluence burgeoned quickly. 

Journalist Ray Stannard Baker visited Brownsville in 1907 and remarked,

“I was surprised to find a large settlement of negroes practically every one of whom owned his own home, some of the houses being as attractive without and as well furnished within as the ordinary homes of middle-class white people… The schoolhouse…was built wholly with money personally contributed by the negroes of the neighborhood… They had three churches and not a saloon.”

His surprise and language reflects the attitudes and prejudices of the day. But sometimes, it’s easy to exhibit a similar surprise when we notice a neighborhood’s gifts! Knowing the history of South Atlanta helps to dampen the prejudices and attitudes of our own time.

In Historic South Atlanta, the ground we walk on every day featured the premiere African-American thinkers, artisans, and professors. A movie theater hosted entertainment nearby, and Clark Atlanta University welcomed swaths of students each year. Brownsville existed as a radical, post-civil war partnership between majority and minority cultures. Even today, when we walk down streets like Gammon, we need to remember that the names of those streets mark the flourishing that’s already embedded in this land. Honoring the neighborhood means recognizing the people who built this place, whose impact lives on.

On one FCS staff member’s desk is a picture of a half dozen or so African American leaders gathering around a drafting table giving life to a dream of the school. He knows that flourishing is already in the DNA of this place. We don’t create it, we’re just rediscovering it.

We cannot thank the South Atlanta Civic League enough for curating the history of our neighborhood. Did you learn something new from this article? Tell us about it!

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