Reflections- Georgia African American Historic Preservation Network, Vol. 6, no. 4 (Apr. 2007)

Volume VI, No. 4 April 2007
A Program of the Historic Preservation Division, Georgia Department of Natural Resources
COMMEMORATING SUMMER HILL:
AN AFRICAN AMERICAN COMMUNITY IN CARTERSVILLE
Jeanne Cyriaque, African American Programs Coordinator
Historic Preservation Division
continued on page 2
Summer Hill is a place filled
with significant memories
for the Cartersville African
American community. It was a
place where African Americans,
regardless of their economic
circumstances, lived in a separate
community during segregation.
Slab Stadium once existed in
Summer Hill, where an African
American entrepreneur hosted
teams from the Negro baseball
league. Summer Hill was home to
Cartersville’s first black doctor,
barbershops, and businesses. It
was once home to Cartersville’s
first gymnasium where African
Americans from Bartow and
surrounding counties played
basketball and competed for state
championships. Summer Hill was
once home to African American
churches of all denominations, an
old Rosenwald School, shop, and
a football field that the community
built on the side of the hill.
Today, when citizens
visit the Summer Hill Educational
& Recreational Complex on
Aubrey Street near the site of the
old gymnasium and Rosenwald
School, there is an impressive
bronze statue of Professor J.S.
Morgan and his wife, Beatrice.
James S. Morgan was a teacher
and later principal of the Summer
Hill School from 1925-1962. The
statue was unveiled on May 26,
2006. The artist was Julia Knight.
Hundreds of people attended the
unveiling that included two
former Georgia governors and was
hosted by Supreme Court Justice
Robert Benham, who once
attended the Summer Hill School
in Cartersville. At the base of the
statue is the inscription “He Who
Thinks Can Conquer” and
Professor Morgan is pointing, as
if illustrating a lesson or pep talk
that he often gave during the
weekly assembly of students and
teachers at Summer Hill. Inside the
complex is a permanent exhibit that
tells the story of the community
that the Morgan family served in
this historic African American
neighborhood in Cartersville.
The Summer Hill Museum
includes memorabilia, family
heirlooms and donated artifacts
along with a wall-mounted exhibit
of historical photos that depict the
Summer Hill community from the
late 19th century to 1970. The
Summer Hill Foundation is the
This bronze statue of Professor James S. and Mrs. Beatrice Morgan steward for this collection today.
was designed by sculptor Julia Knight. The sculpture is located in the
Summer Hill community in Cartersville. Photo by Jeanne Cyriaque
2
Jeanne Cyriaque, continued from page 1
COMMEMORATING SUMMER HILL: AN AFRICAN AMERICAN COMMUNITY IN CARTERSVILLE
In 2003, the Summer Hill community began a project to
document the story of this community. Students and faculty from
the Department of History and Philosophy at Kennesaw State
University (KSU) contacted families, alumni and former teachers
from Summer Hill, and conducted an extensive oral history project
to collectively tell the story of the community. By May 2005 oral
histories were completed for 41 people who were identified as
residents in the Summer Hill census tract or were recommended by
the Etowah Area Consolidated Housing Authority. Students in the
Documentation and Interpretation class conducted 14 audio
interviews. Melissa Massey, project researcher, conducted
subsequent interviews with contacts who were identified in the
initial interviews. Dr. LeeAnn Lands of KSU was the project
coordinator. She edited the interviews and partnered with former
and current residents of the Summer Hill community, the Etowah
Area Consolidated Housing Authority and the Summer Hill
Foundation in this initiative. The results of these oral histories
were captured online in the Summer Hill Project at www.summerhill.org with the support of the Anheuser-Busch and Summer
Hill Foundation(s).
Nancy Beasley was one of the persons the KSU students
interviewed. She is a Cartersville native, and once taught at the
Summer Hill School. Mrs. Beasley has fond memories of the
community called Summer Hill where she grew up with one sister.
Her father once worked at the local mine and later for city hall. Mrs.
Beasley attended Fort Valley State University and worked in the
summers at the Guarantee Life Insurance Company in Atlanta writing
policies. When she graduated, her first teaching assignment was
in an elementary school where she taught grades one through eight.
The following year, she joined the faculty at Summer Hill, where she
was the English teacher and part-time librarian.
When asked about her fondest memories at Summer Hill,
Mrs. Beasley praised Mrs. Morgan, who was an accomplished
pianist. “We learned a lot; we had excellent teachers and … just
great high school courses. But the closeness of Summer Hill was of
such that you knew all the children, you knew their parents.” Mrs.
Beasley vividly recalled how African American students could not
attend Cartersville High School, so the community kept petitioning
each year for the additions of higher grades. In 1951, the year when
she began teaching, they had 12 grades. Summer Hill also had a
contractual agreement with Bartow County that bussed students
from the rural areas to attend this city high school for African
Americans.
Mrs. Beasley remembered the exact location of the Summer
Hill Rosenwald School. “It was a nice building. It had running
water and it had toilets. Professor Morgan continued to build on to
the school and the building behind the school was the shop. So he
taught shop, industrial arts as they called it at the time.” During her
later tenure as an English teacher, she gave lots of homework
assignments and sponsored the drama club. She taught at Summer
Hill for seventeen years until public school integration.
Leonard Moore remembered how the school term
fluctuated during the harvest of cotton. Sometimes the Summer
Hill School closed because many of the students had to assist their
parents in picking cotton. “I loved Summer Hill. I really did. I went
to the old frame building … and I always wanted to go there. We
built our own gymnasium, believe it or not. We cherished that gym.
All the teams from the surrounding counties…would come here for
the tournament. I was on the football team.” Leonard Moore
Alumni from the last graduating class are seated in front of the
permanent exhibit at the Summer Hill Museum. The exhibit is located
in the recreational complex. Photo by Jeanne Cyriaque
The statue of the Morgans is placed above bricks that were donated by
former students and members of the Summer Hill community.
Photo by Jeanne Cyriaque
One of the panels in the permanent exhibit depicts images from the
Summer Hill Rosenwald School. Photo by Jeanne Cyriaque
3
This photo of the Summer Hill Rosenwald School Shop appeared in the
1927 Georgia Department of Education annual report.
regretted the loss of the old Rosenwald School. “Our gym got
burned down, the gym that we built. It got burned down, but the
school stayed there. They decided, I guess, to tear the old school
down, which I hate ... They should have let that thing stay there,
because that was our second home. And that was really our
heritage, that school building. It was an old frame building, but it
meant something to us.”
Moore recalled the used books that the Summer Hill
students received when the white schools got new ones. His wife,
Celesta, credits her college training at Atlanta University with
teaching her how to improvise and make her own teaching materials.
So, when she later taught special education at Summer Hill, she was
prepared to deal with the challenge of teaching with inadequate
school supplies.
Georgia Supreme
Court Justice Robert Benham,
his two brothers and both
parents attended Summer Hill
High School. “The teachers
lived in our community and we
interacted with them, not only
in school but in social, civic
and religious activities
throughout my childhood,”
said Benham. “Cartersville’s
Summer Hill School was the
only black school at the time
in north Georgia that even had
an auditorium. We were the
only school that had a
gymnasium… next to the
school… All of the cultural,
civic, social, religious activities
took place in the Summer Hill
School. We had a band
because the parents got
together and we had to buy
our own instruments and the
parents made the uniforms.”
Benham commented
on other aspects of the
Summer Hill School that
differed from Cartersville’s
white schools: “…the girls
were required to take a course
in home economics. The guys
were required to take a course
in shop. It was called
industrial art. That was only
required in the black
schools…” Both Robert
Benham and Leonard Moore
remembered that the Summer
Hill School was located next
to the city dump. “Every day
the trash trucks would come
right by the school and next to
the school dump all of the trash
from the city and then in the
evening they would set it afire and the odor would waft all through
the black community,” said Benham. Moore recollected that the
location of the city dump did not change until a student was burned
accidentally while playing near the trash.
The oral history interviews also brought out other aspects
of community life in Summer Hill. A number of African American
businesses once existed in the downtown area until 1933, when
John Willie Clark was hung in downtown Cartersville by an angry
white mob for allegedly murdering the police chief. After this
incident, African American businesses began to move to Summer
Hill. Paul Thomas, an African American businessman, owned
residential property and operated Slab Stadium, Cartersville’s black
baseball facility. Churches “were the glue” for the community, said
Justice Benham. They played an extremely important role during
the Civil Rights movement, and doubled as schools. The
Brotherhood Lodge provided burials for community members. New
Frontiers was a men’s organization that was started in the 1960s to
represent the African American community’s interest in issues like
school integration and city government.
The Summer Hill Heritage Committee hosted a two-part
celebration when the oral history project was unveiled at a
community event. “Summer Hill: A Story of Community” is the
documentary that was produced by David Hughes Duke. SunTrust
Banks, Inc. sponsored the documentary. Other corporate partners
included Anheuser-Busch, Aflac, Joe Harris Jr. and the Northwest
Georgia Community Foundation. These partners and the Summer
Hill Foundation sponsored the special screening of the documentary
and a panel discussion that featured some of the former teachers:
Nancy Beasley, Celesta Moore and Susie Wheeler, students like
Justice Robert Benham and Leonard Moore, and the children of
Professor and Mrs. J.S. Morgan. Students from Bartow County
viewed the film screening. The documentary is available for $24.95
and can be ordered online in VHS/DVD formats at the Summer Hill
project website: www.summer-hill.org.
COMMEMORATING SUMMER HILL: AN AFRICAN AMERICAN COMMUNITY IN CARTERSVILLE
Justice Robert Benham of the Georgia
Supreme Court was the master of
ceremony at the unveiling of the statue
of Professor and Mrs. Morgan.
Photo by Jeanne Cyriaque
Teacher resource kits were created
as part of the Summer Hill Project
for Bartow County students to
experience Summer Hill in the
classroom and on-site.
Photo by Jeanne Cyriaque
4
CAN I GET A WITNESS? A CALL AND RESPONSE TO CHANGE IN THE RURAL SOUTH
Hermina Glass-Avery, African American Programs Assistant
Historic Preservation Division
This photo of a Freedmen’s School in rural North Carolina appeared in the
University of California, Davis History Project Collection, and is cited in
the U.S. National Archives, Washington, D.C.
Call and response is an idiom of African and African American
religious and cultural traditions. It is a democratic
communication pattern where an orator or musician exchanges
phrases with one another, as if in conversation. While call and
response is found in many traditions, it fulfills the universal human
need to be affirmed by another and it is quite apparent in many
southern black churches. African American churches served dual
functions as places of spiritual respite as well as sites of civic
action. In fact, churches served as places where an individual’s
desire for social change could be vocalized and put into action.
Nowhere was this idea of ordinary citizens effecting social change
more evident than in the struggle for education for black children.
Long before emancipation, enslaved people always aspired
to educate themselves and their children. Whether through the
assistance of abolitionists or stealing away to a literate slave’s
quarters, education was a cause for which many risked life and limb
to acquire. In the post-bellum era, various organizations such as
missionary aid societies and fraternal lodges offered their meeting
places as makeshift schools, pointing to their deep commitment to
education, the drive of the teachers, and the resourcefulness of the
community. Schoolhouse construction was a community event
with numerous families responding to the call for education for
black children. The manifestation of black schoolhouses on the
southern landscape was a loud call for social change – calls that
rang out from former slaves and their descendants, farm owners
and sharecroppers, housekeepers and domestics, ministers,
parishioners, and even the children themselves.
Threats by whites and legal sanctions that supported racial
discrimination continued well into the 20th century. However, neither
Jim Crow nor white supremacist tactics could dim the desire for
education. Black schoolhouses were often beacons of hope for
many communities despite their dismal conditions. Responding to
the idea that better schoolhouses would provide optimal learning
conditions, Booker T. Washington, principal of Tuskegee Industrial
and Normal Institute (presently Tuskegee University), and premier
champion of black self-help, developed a partnership with Julius
Rosenwald, president of Sears, Roebuck and Company in 1912.
Together, this educator and philanthropist developed a plan to
address the state of African American education in the rural South.
As a result of this partnership over five thousand schools were
built in rural towns from Maryland to Texas.
These schools that came to be called “Rosenwald
Schools,” are symbolic of the desire for change in the rural south
and are shining examples of what “education could do for you,”
states 90-year old Dr. Susie Wheeler. In 1924, she attended the
Noble Hill School, one of two Rosenwald Schools in Bartow County,
Georgia. Located in the Cassville community, Noble Hill was a
wooden two-room structure incorporating a rectangular floor plan
that featured a gabled front façade with a projecting industrial room
flanked on both sides with a vestibule and a cloakroom. Typical of
the two-room design plans of the Rosenwald Fund’s Community
School Plans there were standard tall battery windows located on
the east and west sides of the building to take advantage of natural
light and cross-ventilation.
Dr. Susie Weems Wheeler is a witness to the changes
that have occurred in small rural towns and she can attest to the
influence that early black and white civic leaders had in calling for
measures to address the problems of black education. Her life is
testimony to what could become of black children when they were
provided opportunities in the best educational environment. She
excelled far beyond her dreams to become a schoolteacher when
she was selected to become a Jeanes Supervisor in 1946, a position
that afforded her an opportunity to impact the lives of thousands
of black children. The spry nonagenarian recalled with clarity her
experiences attending Noble Hill:
“Noble Hill was my school. I started there in the first
grade. We had a beautiful time and we enjoyed one another. I must
have been six years old, no five at the beginning. Our parents got
us to school even when the weather was not so well. I was inspired
to be a teacher from my first grade teacher. She was Mrs. Williams.
She was the first grade teacher and her husband was in the other
Dr. Susie Wheeler
Photo by Jeanne Cyriaque
5
During the time between when I graduated and was offered
this job, we had to do the county examination to pass for a teacher
after you finished high school. So, I did that after I finished this
assignment. That’s when I became a full-time teacher…at Cassville
Elementary… the first, second, and third grade. I was there nine
years. But, during the nine years, a lot of changes took place in
terms of my own education…because I saw myself moving towards
a degree. Of course, that meant summer school. When I left
Adairsville, I had gotten married…and my husband had gone to
the service and I went back to school at Fort Valley State. I had
been going to summer school at Atlanta University and I went on
back to Fort Valley with the hope that I could finish my college
education. And I did. (She graduated from Fort Valley State
University in 1945.)
In 1946, in fact, I was approached to become a training
person for Jeanes supervision at Fort Valley State. I had to take the
courses for Jeanes supervision to become one. It would take me
elsewhere, not to Bartow County. But at that time, we had a white
person who served in the state as a guide for black educators and
he was the one who said to me, ‘Go ahead and take the course and
I will try to get you a school – a teaching position in Cartersville.
And then next summer you can finish and I’ll see if I can get you
into supervision in the northern part of the state…because you
don’t want to go to the southern part.’ And that’s how I got into
supervision. I taught one year after finishing college at Summer
Hill High School. I taught the sixth grade. When it was decided
that Bartow County would become a part of the Jeanes supervision
program…Cartersville was selected as a part of this Jeanes
supervision for this northern section of Georgia.
I looked at what
Jeanes Supervisors were
supposed to do. And one
thing was to improve
curriculum. So, naturally I
worked in that area. Not only
that, I had this position that
was sort of like a black
superintendent. And I had to
help get black teachers for the
rural schools and I had to help
try to improve the schools. I
ended up being kind of like
the assistant superintendent.
One thing, at that time, we were
not getting supplies, teaching
supplies. There was this
limitation for the rural schools
because they didn’t have
supplies to work with. At that time, it seems that what we got was
old used materials. So, one of my problems was trying to find out
how to get new materials. First, I dealt with the state to find out
what were the possibilities. Once I got the possibilities, I followed
through. And some sources did respond and some did not respond.
Then the county began to do better with allowing certain amounts
Susie Wheeler was in this first class of the Noble Hill School when it opened
in 1924. Photo courtesy of the Noble Hill-Wheeler Memorial Center
grades at that time. And I would say, ‘I’d like to be like her.’ And
on from there my mother encouraged me to become a
teacher…because I would tell her that I would like to become one.
And I think that’s how I became aware of what education would do
for you and what you had to do to get education.
We all came to Cartersville High, (Summer Hill) because
at that time, to go to a high school we had to leave the rural school
to go to a city school. And of course, the city schools didn’t have
but nine grades. But we came. You know, I always would remember
the fact that I was a little rural girl and they thought rural girls could
not do as well as city girls. So that meant I worked harder to
become a student respected for what I knew. They made me feel
different. So, I tried harder to succeed and did succeed. Of course,
I was the salutatorian when I left that school in ninth grade.
I did continue school, but I had to go away to Griffin,
Georgia…the Cabin Creek High School was where I went to finish
those other three years. It was a boarding school, and I was referred
to that school by the principal at Cartersville High (Summer Hill)
and his wife. I believe she was formerly from Griffin and she knew
about this Cabin Creek School that was sponsored by the Baptist
church. My parents paid for part of it. And I worked to pay a part
for myself.
I was trying to prepare myself to become a teacher. And
yet, preparation was very expensive. Whenever I came back home,
whatever my mom was involved in I got involved in, too. Washing
the clothing for white families or ironing the clothes for white
families, or doing little jobs of that nature. I finished high school in
’35 and I taught six months in Calhoun, Georgia. And that was
because the teacher …got ill and couldn’t finish the year. So, I
finished out her year as my first experience. Evidently, it was known
to the community that there was a need and someone must have
recommended me, even though I had just finished high school. At
that time, when you finished high school you could teach. I moved
there for a five-day period and came home on the weekend. I think
it was twenty-five dollars a month I was paid when I started on a
regular basis.
This photo of Dr. Susie Wheeler
appeared in Jeanes Supervision in
Georgia Schools.
continued on page 6
CAN I GET A WITNESS? A CALL AND RESPONSE TO CHANGE IN THE RURAL SOUTH
6
REMEMBERING THE
1906 ATLANTA RACE RIOT
I
n his poem A Litany of Atlanta W. E. B. DuBois penned these
words after hearing of the outbreak of a bloody race riot in Atlanta:
“A city lay in travail, God our
Lord, and from her loins sprang
twin Murder and Black hate.
Red was the midnight; clang,
crack and cry of death and fury
filled the air and trembled
underneath the stars when
church spires pointed silently
to Thee.” It erupted on the
night of September 22,1906 in
downtown and festered into a
violent four-day upheaval that
would leave a lasting mark on
Atlanta, the South’s Gate City.
Events leading to the
riot began months earlier in a fierce Democratic gubernatorial race.
Lead candidates Hoke Smith, former editor of the Atlanta Journal
Linda Cooks, Steering Committee
Georgia African American Historic Preservation Network
This circa 1906 Atlanta street
scene depicts the Henry Grady
statue that still exists on Marietta
Street today. Photo courtesy of the
Special Collections Department,
Georgia State University Library
Hermina Glass-Avery, continued from page 5
CAN I GET A WITNESS?
A CALL AND RESPONSE TO CHANGE
IN THE RURAL SOUTH
In 1955, the Bartow County Board of Education
consolidated the Noble Hill School along with several others into
the county school system. The school building lay dormant for
more than 25 years until 1983 when Dr. Susie Wheeler originated
the idea to preserve her former alma mater. She worked tirelessly
with her sister-in-law, Bertha Wheeler, to donate the land to the
Noble-Hill Wheeler Memorial Foundation. With the help of the
foundation’s trustees who raised over $200,000, the old school
building that once stood at the center of black life in Cassville was
saved as an important reminder of how architecture, whether formal
or vernacular, private or civic, has the ability to respond to the call
for social change. The Noble Hill-Wheeler Memorial Center
currently serves as a heritage museum in Bartow County. It is open
Tuesday through Saturday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. For more
information, call 770/382-3392.
of funds for purchasing supplies because they knew I was looking
at the purchases of the white schools. So they began to make the
new materials available for our schools as well.
As Jeanes Supervisors, as we grew we organized our
group so we could share with one another what was going on or
what was not going on. That’s how we kept in touch. We also
had state helpers at that time. Most of them had less material
than we had, and they didn’t have the support of the
superintendents like they wanted or the Board of Education.
They were lacking in opportunities to do what they felt they
needed to do. Anything that I was told or that I began to know,
I would share with my teachers.
In the winter of 1949, a vocational program was held at the Summer Hill
School. The group in this photo who attended the program included from
left to right: Principal J.S. Morgan, teacher John Anderson, guest speaker
Dr. Cornelius V. Troup, Jeanes Supervisor Susie W. Wheeler, teacher
Randolph Wesley and Mrs. Beatrice Morgan. Photo courtesy of the Noble
Hill-Wheeler Memorial Foundation.
As time went on, things changed and opportunities
changed. Our superintendent, he was very supportive. Of course,
you know superintendents were still white. I tried not to be too
selfish – that is, to have all the things happen to black schools with
nothing in particular happening in the white schools. And they
began to see what was happening in the black schools and it made
them interested in calling me, getting in touch, finding out how to
do some of the other things. Quality was one thing, but we had
improved our black schools to the point that there was a question
among the white schools as to why were getting ahead so much
faster. And that was the thing that, I think, encouraged integration.
And our superintendent was for this. And by the way, at that time
if you were integrating, you would be set up for more funding from
sources. And of course, that made my superintendent ready to do
that. It was through this superintendent that we got things done.
He believed that integration was something we should strive for.”
The Noble Hill Rosenwald School was listed in the National Register of
Historic Places on July 2, 1987. Photo by Jeanne Cyriaque
Hermina Glass-Avery
African American
Programs Assistant
Voice 404/657-1054
Fax 404/657-1040
hermina_glassavery@dnr.state.ga.us
7
Velmon Allen
Karl Webster Barnes
C. Donald Beall
Linda Cooks
Gerald Golden
Terry & Cynthia Hayes
Kris Roberts
Corinne Blencoe Thornton
Linda Wilkes
Thomas Williams
Isaac Johnson, Chair
706/738-1901
Beth Shorthouse, Vice-Chair
404/253-1488
Jeanne Mills, Secretary
404/753-6265
STEERING
COMMITTEE
Jeanne Cyriaque
African American
Programs Coordinator
Reflections Editor
Voice 404/656-4768
Fax 404/657-1040
jeanne_cyriaque@dnr.state.ga.us
STAFF
and later Clark Howell, editor of The Atlanta Constitution, built
their campaign platforms on the promotion of African American
political and social disenfranchisement. At the same time, racial
tensions increased in the city as local newspapers began printing a
series of unfounded stories of attacks on white women by black
men, prompting a “Negro crime” scare. Rage came to a head on
Saturday night, September 22nd when thousands of white men and
boys led vicious attacks against unsuspecting African American
men and women in the downtown area while they were walking the
streets, working in downtown businesses and riding in streetcars.
Attacks continued throughout the city for the next three days.
At the end of the riot at least 25 blacks were killed according
to the Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution.
Though faded from the public memory of most Atlantans
today, the impact of this horrific event had a lasting influence on
the city’s commercial and residential neighborhood patterns, political
policy and race relations. Many African Americans left the city
while others residing inside the downtown area relocated their
homes and businesses to the Auburn Avenue neighborhood and
other areas of the city. Not only were segregated neighborhoods
redefined, but Jim Crow laws in the city escalated, further promoting
the separation of races. The culmination of this riot also marked the
beginning of an Atlanta tradition of interracial cooperation between
white and black civic, business and religious leaders in an effort to
resolve social and political issues that stained the city’s image.
There are a number of notable sites affiliated with the 1906
Atlanta Race Riot. Five Points is a landmark downtown intersection
where violent white crowds gathered before chasing and attacking
blacks on surrounding downtown streets. Near the Henry Grady
statue on Marietta Street, rioters paraded and laid the beaten and
bloody bodies of three slain black victims. South View Cemetery is
the resting place of many of the African American victims of the
riot. Brownsville (now known as
South Atlanta) was a black upperclass neighborhood that armed
and defended itself against white
rioters who raided their community
on Monday, September 24, 1906.
The Gammon Theological
Seminary/Clark University
(now the campus of the New
Schools of George Washington
Carver) was formerly located in
this neighborhood.
In preparation for the
centennial anniversary of the 1906
Riot, the Coalition to Remember
the 1906 Atlanta Race Riot
sponsored a variety of projects
such as archival research, oral
history interviews, walking tours of
the Five Points area, lectures and
discussions to increase public
awareness of the riot, spur dialogue in the community regarding
this little known episode in Atlanta’s history, and encourage
reconciliation. An exhibit entitled Red Was the Midnight opened
at the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site in Atlanta on
September 15, 2006 and is
available for public viewing
through August 2007. The
public also participated in a
Centennial Remembrance
weekend on September 21
through September 24, 2006.
Events included panel
discussions, presentations, art
performances and exhibits
throughout the downtown
area. For more information
regarding the 1906 Atlanta
Race Riot and commemorative
events, log onto http://
www.1906atlantaraceriot.org.
Three African Americans were
killed during the 1906 Atlanta
Race Riot near the site of the Henry
Grady statue on Marietta Street.
Photo by Jeanne Cyriaque
Clifford Kuhn and Clarissa MyrickHarris discussed the 1906 Atlanta
Race Riot during their educational
session at the African American
Preservation Alliance conference in
Memphis. Photo by Jeanne Cyriaque
Isaac Johnson
Chairman
The Georgia African American Historic Preservation Network (GAAHPN)
was established in January 1989. It is composed of representatives from
neighborhood organizations and preservation groups. GAAHPN was formed
in response to a growing interest in preserving the cultural and ethnic diversity of
Georgia’s African American heritage. This interest has translated into a number of
efforts which emphasize greater recognition of African American culture and
contributions to Georgia’s history. The GAAHPN Steering Committee meets regularly
to plan and implement ways to develop programs that will foster heritage education,
neighborhood revitalization, and support community and economic development.
The Network is an informal group of over 2,300 people who have an interest in
preservation. Members are briefed on the status of current and planned projects and are
encouraged to offer ideas, comments and suggestions. The meetings provide an
opportunity to share and learn from the preservation experience of others and to receive
technical information through workshops. Members receive a newsletter, Reflections,
produced by the Network. Visit the Historic Preservation Division website at
www.gashpo.org. Preservation information and previous issues of Reflections are
available online. Membership in the Network is free and open to all.
ABOUT GAAHPN
This publication has been financed in part with federal
funds from the National Park Service, Department of the
Interior, through the Historic Preservation Division,
Georgia Department of Natural Resources. The contents
and opinions do not necessarily reflect the views or
policies of the Department of the Interior, nor does the
mention of trade names, commercial products or
consultants constitute endorsement or recommendation
by the Department of the Interior or the Georgia
Department of Natural Resources. The Department
of the Interior prohibits discrimination on the basis
of race, color, national origin, or disability in its
federally assisted programs. If you believe you have
been discriminated against in any program, activity, or
facility, or if you desire more information, write to: Office
for Equal Opportunity, National Park Service, 1849 C
Street, NW, Washington, D.C. 20240.
Published quarterly by the
Historic Preservation Division
Georgia Department of Natural Resources
W. Ray Luce, Division Director &
Deputy State Historic Preservation Officer
Jeanne Cyriaque, Editor
A Program of the
Historic Preservation Division
Georgia Department of Natural Resources
34 Peachtree Street, NW
Suite 1600
Atlanta, GA 30303-2316