- Collection:
- Planning Atlanta - A New City in the Making, 1930s-1990s
- Title:
- Richard Byrd oral history interview, 2015 Feburary 11
- Creator:
- Byrd, Richard
- Contributor to Resource:
- Allen, Leslye Joy
- Publisher:
- Georgia State University Library
- Date of Original:
- 2015-02-11
- Subject:
- Urban renewal
Housing
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:
- Richard Byrd is a retired Public Health Advisor with the United States Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service/Health Resource Service Administration. A native of Atlanta, he received his undergraduate education at Morehouse College and later earned a Master of Arts degree from the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration. He studied Management and Administration at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, Georgia State University, and Mississippi State University. Byrd is also a licensed clinical social worker. He is a member of 100 Black Men of Atlanta, where he has served as Chaplain, Co-Chair of the Anti-Violence Committee, and as a member of its Board of Directors. Byrd has held leadership roles in numerous other civic organizations, including the West End Kiwanis Club, the Atlanta Council of Boy Scouts, the Clayton County Civitans, the South Central Mental Health Center, the City of Atlanta Charter Review Committee, the Advisory Board of the Carver Cluster of the Atlanta Project, and the Board of Directors St. Paul Collaborative, Inc. He is the founder and Executive Director of Atlanta Voters United, an organization cited in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution for its registration of students in the Atlanta University Center during President Barack Obama's election campaign. Byrd was married to the late Mrs. Ruth Zachery-Byrd and Mrs. D. Leah Neal-Byrd; his daughter, Ms. Kinaya S. Byrd, is also deceased. He is currently married to Dr. Dell Wilkerson-Byrd and is a member of St. Paul AME Church.
This interview was conducted with Mr. Richard Byrd, who currently lives near the Thomasville/Norwood Manor area. Byrd describes his childhood growing up in the Pittsburgh community of Atlanta, where his father was a railroad fireman for the Southern Railroad. He discusses many prominent and entrepreneurial African-American families and citizens in Atlanta. Byrd describes the housing stock, physical geography, and boundaries of many of Atlanta's African-American communities, including Pittsburgh, Summerhill, Wooley Hill, Collier Heights and Thomasville. He describes Thomasville as an extension of the South Atlanta African-American community referred to as "Browns Town," which was a thriving African-American community before the turn of the twentieth century. Byrd discusses the multiple causes of blight in some low-income African-American communities in Atlanta, including policy changes in public housing and the construction of freeways as a result of urban renewal, which disrupted the geographic and cultural cohesiveness of those neighborhoods.
Locations: Thomasville -- Fulton County (Ga.) -- Atlanta (Ga.) - Metadata URL:
- http://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/PlanATL/id/2839
- IIIF manifest:
- https://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/iiif/2/PlanATL:2839/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: 00:56:42, Transcript: 39 pages
- Holding Institution:
- Georgia State University. Special Collections
- Rights:
-
