Suburb created by blacks seeks historic title

ATLANTA --- The spacious ranch and split-level homes with manicured lawns spreading for block after block in northwest Atlanta's Collier Heights were the very picture of mid-century American suburbia. The black families who moved into them were not.

Built at the end of Jim Crow, Collier Heights stood as a testament to Atlanta's black elite and powerful, home to civil rights leaders, educators, lawyers and entrepreneurs. Today, supporters of the neighborhood want to put the first major black suburb built after World War II on the National Register of Historic Places.

"It was one of the first in the country created by and for African-Americans," said Richard Laub, a historical preservationist at Georgia State University. "The African-American community was flexing their muscles."

Last week, Collier Heights was highlighted by the Docomomo/US society, which promotes conservation of buildings and architectural styles from the Modern Movement.

The idyllic setting was what black business and civic leaders envisioned decades ago.

In the mid-1940s, the group went to the white city fathers with a plan they called "Proposed Areas for Negro Expansion," said Andrew Wiese, a history professor at San Diego State University and author of the book Places of Their Own: African American Suburbanization in the 20th Century .

"Through some really interesting wrangling and politics, by using whites' racism against them, they were able to make strategic purchases of property," Mr. Wiese said.

For generations before, even middle- and upper-class blacks were confined to the cramped inner city. But from the 1920s through the 1940s, they began buying tracts outside the city limits to build their version of suburbia. They spent years acquiring land in hopes of improving housing options. In the end, nearly 2,000 homes were built.

A Who's Who of black Atlanta called Collier Heights home: the Rev. Martin Luther King Sr.; Ralph David Abernathy, an ally of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference; prominent civil rights attorney Donald Hollowell; and entrepreneur Herman Russell.

Some of the homes were as distinctive as their residents: one is dubbed the "pagoda ranch" for its Asian influence and another is a unique circular house built of tan brick.

Mr. Laub, who directs the Heritage Preservation Program at Georgia State, taught a class last spring adopting the neighborhood as a case study.

Though the suburb barely qualifies as historic -- the first of its 55 subdivisions weren't built until the 1950s -- it was ripe for research in a way that is normally impossible in older districts.

"It's very rare to be able to talk to the people who settled the neighborhood," Mr. Laub said.

Gigi Dickens felt like she and her husband, Robert, had arrived when they moved into the Woodlawn Heights section of the neighborhood in 1961. She was a public schoolteacher, and her husband worked for the federal housing department.

"We used to have a great, big neighborhood picnic," Mrs. Dickens said.

Today, the neighborhood is not what it was a few decades ago.

Its richest resource -- the original residents -- are aging and unable to maintain the homes. Younger people now have their choice of where to live in Atlanta. Crime has also become an issue.

Still, those who remain know they are part of something unique, said Richard Cloues, who works for the state historic preservation office.