- Collection:
- Planning Atlanta - A New City in the Making, 1930s-1990s
- Title:
- Norwood Manor Civic Association oral history interview, 2015 January 29
- Creator:
- Beatles, Rosaria; Fears, Michael; Turner, Hollis; Robinson, Douglas; Knox, Sandra
- Contributor to Resource:
- Allen, Leslye Joy
- Publisher:
- Georgia State University Library
- Date of Original:
- 2015-01-29
- Subject:
- Urban renewal
African Americans--Social life and customs
Metropolitan government
Housing
Enterprise zones
Hartsfield, William Berry - People:
- Franklin, Shirley, 1945-
Allen, Ivan, 1911-2003
Jackson, Maynard, 1938-2003 - Location:
- United States, Georgia, Fulton County, Atlanta, 33.749, -84.38798
- Medium:
- transcripts
digital audio formats - Type:
- Text
Sound - Format:
- application/pdf
audio/mpeg - Description:
- Originally from Senoia, Georgia, Ms. Hollis Turner grew up in Norwood Manor with her parents who moved there in 1956 when she was three years old. She attended John Wesley Dobbs Elementary School, Fulton High School, Georgia State University, and Atlanta Area Technical College. Turner worked for roughly thirty-five years for the Federal Government as a Technical Support Assistant with the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Turner moved away from Norwood Manor in her young adulthood but returned in 1989. She is now retired and continues her service to her community through the Norwood Manor Civic Association. Ms. Sandra Knox was born in 1945 and raised in the Thomasville area. She is the great-great-great-great granddaughter of Reverend Henry and Amanda Thomas, the original founders of the Thomasville area of Atlanta. Knox is the sixth of eleven children born to Lessie and Nat Knox. She attended Thomasville Elementary School (later renamed John Wesley Dobbs Elementary School), Luther Judson Price High School, and Spelman College. She retired from the Internal Revenue Service in 1997. She has served on the Executive Committee of the Norwood Manor Civic Association since 2000, and at the time of this writing in 2015 she serves as the organization's treasurer. Mr. Michael Fears was born at Grady Memorial Hospital and attended John Wesley Dobbs Elementary School and Fulton High School. He attended the Georgia Institute of Technology for two years before transferring to and graduating from Clark College (now Clark Atlanta University). He is the son of Atlanta grassroots civil and political rights activist Asberry Fears. As a teenager, he was the city of Atlanta's first African-American traffic checker, a summer job he performed in the early 1960s during the administration of Mayor Ivan Allen, Jr. He worked as a Revenue Officer for the Internal Revenue Service from 1968 to 1976. He is now retired from the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) after twenty-five years of service as an Equal Opportunity Minority Business Enterprise Officer. Fears has served as President of the Norwood Manor Civic Association for most of its existence, since 1997. Ms. Rosaria Natasha Smith Beatles was born in 1958 at the Hughes Spalding Pavilion of Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta. She is the daughter of a nurse and a self-employed cab driver, Sarah and Harry Smith, who moved to Norwood Manor in 1955. Beatles attended Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Elementary School, Saint Joseph Catholic High School, and graduated with a B. A. in History from Thomas More College in Kentucky. She worked for Home Depot as a Merchant Assistant, Project Coordinator, and Account Manager for over nine years. She has also worked as an activist with civil rights leaders such as the Reverend Hosea Williams, and with organizations such as Hands On Atlanta and Habitat for Humanity. She has served on the Executive Committee of the Norwood Manor Association since 2012. Mr. Douglas Robinson was born in McClendon Hospital in Atlanta. He grew up in the John Eagan Homes and attended Berean Seventh Day Adventist Academy as a child and graduated from Booker T. Washington High School. After high school in 1968, he worked at the City of Atlanta Fire Department until he was called to serve in the United States Army; he fought in the Vietnam War from 1969 to 1971. After his tour of duty ended, he returned to his job at the City of Atlanta Fire Department, where he worked from 1971 until he retired in 1998. Robinson moved to Norwood Manor in 1982 with his wife and children, all of whom attended John Wesley Dobbs Elementary School. In 2005 he joined the Norwood Manor Civic Association as a member of its Executive Committee.
This interview includes the five members of the Executive Committee of the Norwood Manor Civic Association: Mr. Michael Fears, Ms. Hollis A. Turner, Ms. Rosaria Natasha Smith Beatles, Ms. Sandra Knox, and Mr. Douglas Robinson. This executive committee functions on behalf of the subdivision Norwood Manor, which is located in the Thomasville area of Atlanta. In this interview, all members discuss their childhoods, parents, neighbors, schools and services in the area, their relationships with local business owners, and the necessity of preserving the Norwood Manor neighborhood for future generations. They express varied opinions about the effects of urban renewal on the Thomasville/ Norwood Manor area. They discuss the manner in which the administrations of Atlanta mayors William B. Hartsfield, Ivan Allen, Jr., and Sam Massell responded to the needs of African-American communities in the city. They also discuss the significance and the singular importance of Atlanta's first African-American mayor Maynard H. Jackson, Jr., along with the administration of the city's first woman mayor, Shirley Franklin. Group members discuss builder, entrepreneur and political activist, Robert Norwood, Sr., who built Norwood Manor. The group also highlights the work of local African-American grassroots activists and entrepreneurs Asberry Fears and John Wesley Dobbs, both of whom contributed to the growing political clout of African Americans in Atlanta long before the emergence of a national Civil Rights Movement. Also included is a discussion of the effects of President Bill Clinton's Empowerment Zone program in Atlanta, and on the Norwood Manor subdivision and general Thomasville area.
Locations: Thomasville -- Fulton County (Ga.) -- Atlanta (Ga.) - Metadata URL:
- http://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/PlanATL/id/2807
- IIIF manifest:
- https://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/iiif/2/PlanATL:2807/manifest.json
- Language:
- eng
- Additional Rights Information:
- Copyright to this item is owned by Georgia State University Library. Georgia State University Library has made this item available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. For more information see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
- Extent:
- Audio: 01:58:26, Transcript: 112 pages
- Holding Institution:
- Georgia State University. Special Collections
- Rights:
-
