- Collection:
- Planning Atlanta - A New City in the Making, 1930s-1990s
- Title:
- Thomasville Group oral history interview, 2015 March 12
- Creator:
- Knox, Winston; Love, Anthony; Cunningham, Albert; McKay, Dorothy
- Contributor to Resource:
- Allen, Leslye Joy
- Publisher:
- Georgia State University Library
- Date of Original:
- 2015-03-12
- Subject:
- Urban renewal
Public housing--Government policy
African Americans
Neighborhoods--Social aspects - 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:
- Albert Cunningham, Jr. is the grandson of Robert Norwood, Sr., the builder and businessman who built Norwood Manor in the Thomasville area of Atlanta. Cunningham attended Luther Judson Price High School and Hoke Smith Technical School. He is a member of Bible Way Church, which was founded in part by his maternal grandmother Darthula Norwood. He retired in 2000 from the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA), where he worked as a bus and train operator for thirty years. Although he currently resides in Monticello, Georgia, Cunningham regularly returns to Thomasville to take care of his family home and to attend Bible Way Church services. Winston L. Knox is the great-great-great-great grandson of Reverend Henry Thomas and Amanda Thomas, for whom Thomasville was named. Born in Atlanta, he attended Thomasville Elementary School and Luther Judson Price High School. He joined the United States Air Force in 1961 and served until 1965. He attended Atlanta Technical College and Atlanta Metropolitan College. He enlisted in the United States Army Reserves in 1976 and served for twenty years. He retired from the Internal Revenue Service in 1999 after working there for thirty-one years. Dorothy Norwood McKay is the daughter of Robert Norwood, Sr. and Darthula Norwood. Born in Atlanta at Grady Memorial Hospital, McKay attended junior high school in South Atlanta and graduated from Booker T. Washington High School. She attended Morris Brown College for two years. She was married for forty-three years to the late Nelson McKay. The couple had three children. She was primarily a homemaker for most of her married life. McKay, along with her sisters and their mother Darthula Norwood, became deeply involved with Bible Way Church. Because of her missionary and community outreach programs at Bible Way Church, she is considered a part of the group of individuals who helped build this church that has been crucial to both social and religious life in the Thomasville area. Anthony Love attended elementary school and high school in the Thomasville area before moving there with his parents and five siblings in 1965. He attended Thomasville Elementary School and graduated from Luther Judson Price High School in 1963. A talented high school athlete, Love won a basketball and baseball scholarship to Tennessee State University. He left Tennessee State University after a year and a half and transferred to South Carolina State University, where he continued his involvement in athletics. He married while in college, and he and his wife have two children. Love is now retired from Lockheed Aircraft in Marietta, Georgia, where he worked as a supervisor for thirty-four years.
This interview was conducted by Leslye Joy Allen with Anthony Love, Albert Cunningham, Jr., Winston Knox, and Dorothy Norwood McKay. Love, Cunningham, and Knox were classmates together at Luther Judson Price High School in the Thomasville area of Atlanta. The male interviewees discuss growing up in Thomasville and their experiences with classmates and athletic teammates at Price High School. They describe the influential African-American male teachers and coaches that they encountered in high school and in the Thomasville area. All interviewees emphasize that Bible Way Church was a central location for recreational activities for children and teenagers who lived in Thomasville. Cunningham discusses how his maternal grandfather Robert Norwood, Sr. developed Norwood Manor as a self-contained African-American neighborhood in Thomasville. The interviewees state that although many effects of urban renewal on the area have been positive, all of them believe that the building of apartments and subsidized housing in the 1970s had a negative effect on the Thomasville area.
Locations: Thomasville -- Fulton County (Ga.) -- Atlanta (Ga.) - Metadata URL:
- http://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/PlanATL/id/2810
- IIIF manifest:
- https://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/iiif/2/PlanATL:2810/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: 00:55:28, Transcript: 42 pages
- Holding Institution:
- Georgia State University. Special Collections
- Rights:
-
