The Streetcar ain't so Bad
With
all the Nattering Nabobs of Negativism passing judgement on the Atlanta
Streetcar, saying in essence that in the year that it’s been in operation it
hasn’t solved all of our traffic problems throughout the metro, and neither has
it brought people together in peace and harmony; nor has it solved the problem
of homelessness.
An
yet, in spite of the negative press the Streetcar has been getting of late,
there are some good things coming from the investment, and fortunately CNN’s Emanuella
Grinberg, looking for good news, went and found some. And not only that, but she tied it into Dr. King's legacy as well.
Progress? Definitely.
Life returns—slowly—to
MLK's old neighborhood
By Emanuella Grinberg, CNN
Saturday, January 16, 2016
Ricci de Forest is proprietor of the Madam C.J. Walker
Beauty Shoppe Museum on Hilliard Street between Auburn Avenue and Old Wheat
Street. The site of an original Madam C.J. Walker salon, the museum features
antique hair-care products and marketing memorabilia from the era when Walker
was one of few entrepreneurs targeting the African-American haircare market. In
addition to curating the haircare exhibit, de Forest, a stylist, sees clients
in the salon and broadcasts a radio show under the call letters WERD, the first
black-owned radio station, which started in the Prince Hall Grand Lodge
Above the salon.
Jackson McGrady Smith Jr. remembers the first time
streetcars rolled through the streets of Atlanta, connecting his
African-American neighborhood on Auburn Avenue to the seat of white leadership
downtown.
Not that he had much use for them growing up in the 1940s
and 1950s, when Jim Crow ruled the South and restricted where African-Americans
lived, worked and socialized. Besides, Smith says, he had just about everything
he needed up on Auburn Avenue, then the center of black life in Atlanta. In 1956,
Fortune magazine dubbed it the "richest Negro street in the world."
 |
Last surviving Atlanta Streetcar
operates at the Seashore Trolley
Museum in Kennebunkport, Me.
|
When the last streetcar rang in 1949, Auburn Avenue and
other parts of the Old Fourth Ward brimmed with black-owned grocers, banks,
churches, cultural institutions, restaurants and offices. The trolleys returned
in late 2014 to serve a different group.
 |
A modern Atlanta Streetcar head towards downtown
on Auburn Avenue. The spire in the background
is Big Bethel AME Church. |
Today, an electric streetcar shuttles tourists from downtown
Atlanta to Smith's old stomping grounds -- now a separate neighborhood from Old
Fourth Ward called "Sweet Auburn" -- and the nearby King Center,
which pays homage to the neighborhood's most famous resident, the Rev. Martin
Luther King. Jr.
Smith agreed to hop aboard the new streetcar on Thursday, a
day before annual weekend-long celebrations of the civil rights leader kicked
off. As the streetcar hummed past the funeral home where King's body was
prepared, Smith launched into his life story, pointing out landmarks from his childhood.
Smith's journey from Auburn Avenue to Morehouse College to
regional division manager of the Federal Aviation Administration is in many
ways a realization of King's dream of upward mobility for African-Americans.
The story of Auburn Avenue, however, and the Old Fourth Ward
has not been as linear.
Much has been written about the decline of Auburn Avenue
after desegregation, which led families and businesses to leave the
neighborhood, and its struggle to rebuild. In the past five or six years, the
narrative has taken a cautiously optimistic turn as new businesses and
residential real estate open in the area and Georgia State University's
footprint in the neighborhood expands.
The streetcar has been touted as a crucial piece of this
renaissance by bringing visitors to the area. What will they find when they get
there?
Smith's father owned the gas station at the corner of Auburn
Avenue and Jackson Street, where the family lived. Across the street is
Ebenezer Baptist Church, where King's father, the Rev. Martin Luther King Sr., baptized
Smith at age 5 and presided over Smith's wedding. Smith watched MLK grow from a
young man known as M.L. to Rev. M.L., then Rev. King, and, finally, Dr. King.
As a teen, Smith mowed King's lawn and inherited his old suits and wing-tipped
shoes.
Today, the gas station is gone, replaced by a shopping plaza
with a barber shop and a store selling homeopathic remedies, both popular with
the seniors who live across the street in Wheat Street Towers. Ebenezer is still
there, adjacent to the King Center, and King's birth home is up the street. The
landmarks are the main destinations for tourists disembarking at the King
historic district. Due to its relative high foot traffic, the streetcar stop
attracts panhandlers offering tour guide services in exchange for donations to
get them a bed at the Atlanta Mission.
Down the road, derelict buildings now jostle for space with
new hipster bars, upscale restaurants and cafes, embodying tension between past
and present in an area experiencing gentrification in some parts and stalled development
in others.
An irrepressible booster for Atlanta -- "the most
beautiful city in the world" -- Smith proudly holds himself up as a
product of Atlanta in the civil rights era, as well as Ebenezer and "Daddy
King."
Will today's residents of King's neighborhood benefit from
the same supportive environment? Smith has his doubts.
"I think Dr. King would be disappointed in the poverty
that's still showing up on Auburn Avenue," he said, slowly choosing his
words, as the streetcar rolled through the Georgia State campus.
"He would be disappointed in all the violence that
still goes on and the crime. He would've thought that we would've advanced more
toward peace and liberty and respecting everybody's rights. I know we're not
there yet."
What would MLK's father, "Daddy King," make of it?
"He believed in entrepreneurship. 'Daddy King' would be
disappointed at the slow economic development that we've been able to take
advantage of," he said.
Change for the better?
A ride down Auburn on the streetcar bears testament to
Smith's concerns, as well as signs of progress. Plenty of business owners share
the entrepreneurial spirit of "Daddy King" along Auburn and Edgewood
Avenues. But for every mom and pop shop
there's a crumbling storefront or empty lot serving as reminders of what the
neighborhood used to be and could be again.
History hides in plain sight; blink and you might miss the
explanatory signs hanging on poles and historic plaques on sides of buildings.
One block from Smith's childhood home -- past Atlanta's two oldest black-owned funeral
homes, a fast-food seafood joint and a convenience store -- is the masonic hall
that was home to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's first office
and its new Atlanta headquarters. Around the corner is a restored Madam C. J.
Walker salon featuring antique hair care products.
Separating the businesses from the historic cluster is a
dilapidated building and a desolate lot offering a view of the former site of
the WheatStreet Garden Apartments (not to be confused with the Wheat Street Tower).
The homes were a unique partnership between nearby Wheat Street Baptist Church
and the city to provide affordable housing to low-income families displaced by
urban renewal policies that replaced slum housing with stadiums, civic centers
and highways—including I-20 and the I-75/I-85 connector.
Today, it's home to a community urban garden which started
in 2010 and has proven sustainable through community farming initiatives.
In winter months, however, plants in the ground and barren
trees on the lot don't offer much of a view. On Thursday, a former resident of
the apartment happened to be visiting the neighborhood with her daughter and
stopped to take it in.
Donyale Printup left the neighborhood in 2007 for Stone
Mountain, one year before the buildings were demolished. She has fond memories
of growing up with her extended family in the homes. But when drugs became
rampant in the late 1990s she decided it was time to leave.
She's happier in Stone Mountain, where it's quiet and
"I don't have to worry about all the noise," she said. Her daughter,
19-year-old Kasey, misses the energy of the city.
Printup said something needed to change on Auburn but the
neglected buildings are barely an improvement.
"Wouldn't it be nice if they got a Target or Ross or
somewhere nice to shop? The little trolley comes through but there's nothing to
do. If people are coming here from all over they should have something to
see," she said.
"I'm just overwhelmed by all the changes," she
added, "but the thing is, what are the changes for?"
Ricci de Forest, proprietor of the Madam C.J. Walker Beauty
Shoppe Museum , remembers when his salon looked onto the Wheat Street Garden
Apartments, recalling with fondness the tight-knit community of extended
families living among drug dealers and "crack addicts."
A professional stylist who moved to Atlanta in the 1980s, de
Forest was enchanted by the abandoned storefront with the salon's original
signage miraculously preserved. Even better were the antique hair care products
left behind.
He moved his salon into the shop about 10 years ago and put
the antiques on display, transforming the space into a time capsule. On the
other side of the room, vintage vinyl fills tall shelves. When he learned that
the space above the salon in the Prince Hall Masonic Temple http://sweetauburn.us/princehall.htm
was home to WERD,America's first
black-owned radio station he was inspired to revive the call numbers and start
a radio show.
He said he brokered an understanding with the drug dealers
and users that led to peaceful coexistence. Streetcar-related construction was
a bigger disruption to his business before it started running in late 2014, he
said.
"There's no doubt it's a crucial piece in revitalizing
Auburn Avenue," he said, a glass of red wine in his hand as jazz from his
radio broadcast filled the salon. "We have built it so they will come. Now
we need to work on bringing more businesses and vitality to the neighborhood.
"Progress didn't start with Dr. King, and it didn't end
with him."
Signs of progress
Down the street near the Dobbs Plaza streetcar stop, past
more Instagram-worthy "ruin porn and a walk beneath the 14-lane highway,
is another survivor.
Ten years ago, Sweet Auburn Bread Company http://www.sweetauburnbread.com/
owner Sonya James moved from the Sweet Auburn Curb Market on Edgewood into the
Odd Fellows building http://sweetauburn.us/oddfellows.htm,
the former headquarters of the Atlanta Chapter of the Grand Order of Odd
Fellows. The building's Jacobean revival architecture recalls the grandeur of
the era when it served as a hub for black businesses and the site of a black
social club.
James makes the most of the bakery/storefront, squeezing
into the tight space a display case of tempting pastries, shelves of preserves
and framed newspaper clippings of the time she presented President Bill Clinton
with her famous sweet potato cheesecake.
In this space, she weathered streetcar construction, the
economic recession and a 2008 tornado which took out several historic
structures, includingthe Herndon Building http://sweetauburn.us/herndon.htm>
across the street—former home of NAACP offices, The Savoy Hotel, the Atlanta
Urban League and B.B. Beamon's, a white-table cloth restaurant for blacks where
Smith brought his prom date.
A native Atlantan, James is proud to continue Auburn
Avenue's legacy of black entrepreneurship.
"This is my home," she said as she prepared food
for delivery in a small space behind the display case. "When people come
all the way to visit historic Auburn Avenue we have to give them something to
see."
Right across the street is a relative newcomer who has made
it past the one-year mark in an area of high business turnover. The walls of
Sweet Auburn Seafood <http://sweetauburnseafood.com/> are decorated with
pictures of neighborhood landmarks -- King's birth home, the Royal Peacock, Big
Bethel AME Church –and past Atlanta mayors.
General manager Douglas Jester, another Atlanta native,
remembers when Auburn was the epicenter of the civil rights movement. Some of
the pictures hanging on the restaurant's wall are of politicians—Maynard
Jackson,
Andrew Young -- who visited Jester's school in the nearby
Summerhill neighborhood to talk to students about black pride and the value of
an education.
He also remembers when the neighborhood "lost its
charm" in the 1980s as disinvestment coupled with nation's drug epidemic
made Auburn Avenue an urban blight.
"We want to be a viable partner in the community,"
he said. "Because I'm a native it means a lot to me to know that this is
home."
On the other side of the street, the Royal Peacock marquee
remains, advertising twerking contests and DJs at a nightclub now known as M.
Next door, another historic facade lingers, the hand-painted lettering on the window
of Silver Moon Barber Shop -- "the oldest barbershop in Atlanta"—even
though the inside has been abandoned since 2012.
As Georgia State University approaches near the Piedmont
streetcar stop, students lugging backpacks and bags of takeout walk past a
beauty salon, a Caribbean restaurant, niche retail stores. After sitting empty
for nearly seven years due to tornado damage, the Atlanta Daily World building—former
home of the country's oldest black newspaper -- reopened in 2015 with a juice
shop and, later, a coffee shop.
This is the part of Auburn that gives Smith hope.
The gentrification debate
As the streetcar passes through Centennial Olympic Park, a
panhandler who tried to offer us a national historic site pamphlet for the King
Center tries his luck on Smith. After declining politely, Smith ponders why his
people are still struggling, especially in King's hometown.
It's two things, he said.
"You're a product of your environment. I'm a good
example of that. I would not have advanced in my life like I did had it not
been for the environment I grew up in with Ebenezer and the Kings, feeling that
failure is not an option," he said. "Then, there is systematic
organized racism, against males and females and Hispanics and it's not getting
any better with this presidential stuff we got going now. I think Dr. King and
"Daddy King" would disappointed with some of the rhetoric we're
hearing and the anti-Muslim stuff."
The solution? "The black church played such an
important role in the advancement of our people," he said. "We need
more social activism, more leadership to help guide our people like I've been
talking about. How 'Daddy King' guided us at Ebenezer."
The streetcar turns onto Edgewood Avenue, ground zero for
Atlanta' s gentrification debate. Through some see it as a positive bellwether
for Atlanta' s revitalization hopes, others see it in another light. Sister Louisa's Church of the Living Room
& Ping Pong Emporium is a popular destination for ping pong and church
organ karaoke.
"('Daddy King') would probably be a little disappointed
that there's not a lot of black businesses up and down Edgewood there,"
Smith said.
It's just one block away, but unlike on Auburn Avenue, white-owned
businesses have anchored Edgewood Avenue for decades, many of which are still
standing, said Joe Stewardson, president of the Old Fourth Ward Business
Association. Even if white-owned businesses outnumber black-owned businesses on
Edgewood, he says it's still among the most diverse business corridors and
neighborhoods in Atlanta.
"Change is hard and you can call it whatever you want
and no matter what you do there's always going to be some groups or individuals
that have problems with those changes," said Stewardson, a property owner
on Edgewood who's also on the board of the Sweet Auburn Works initiative.
"At the end of the day, what's really important is that
whoever we attract legitimately wants to have a great neighborhood where
everyone can live, work and play in a safe environment. "
As day turns to night, revelers fill the sidewalks, lining
up outside bars that draw patrons of all colors from throughout the city and
suburbs: blacks, whites, Latinos, Asians.
Progress? Maybe.
—end—
