Entry · catalog no. 2417
Sweet Auburn
/ /swit ˈɔbɚn/ /SWEET AW-burn
proper noun · Atlanta, Georgia · 1930s
✓ Verified
1.
The stretch of Auburn Avenue running east from Peachtree Street on the edge of downtown Atlanta, and the neighborhood around it, which under segregation held the densest concentration of Black-owned banks, insurance companies, newspapers, churches, clubs and lodges in the South. Its institutions included Atlanta Life Insurance, Citizens Trust Bank, the Atlanta Daily World, Big Bethel AME, Ebenezer Baptist and the Top Hat Club, later the Royal Peacock; Martin Luther King Jr. was born at 501 Auburn Avenue.
“Her grandfather banked on Sweet Auburn because no white bank downtown would write him a loan.”
Origin & Attribution
The name was given by John Wesley Dobbs, Grand Master of the Most Worshipful Prince Hall Grand Lodge of Georgia from 1932 until his death in 1961 and the avenue's unofficial mayor. The street had been Wheat Street until it was renamed Auburn Avenue in 1893; sweet was Dobbs's addition, and it is widely reported that he took the phrasing from Oliver Goldsmith's poem The Deserted Village, which opens on sweet Auburn. No source consulted here fixes an exact year for the coinage — accounts place it variously in the 1920s and 1930s — and the date given in this entry is approximate. Fortune magazine described the avenue in 1956 as the richest Negro street in the world, a line so often quoted that the magazine is frequently credited with naming the street. It did not. The district was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1976, after decades of decline driven by the Downtown Connector cutting through it and by the departure of businesses and residents once integration opened the rest of the city.
1893
Wheat Street renamed Auburn Avenue
1905
Alonzo Herndon founds Atlanta Life Insurance Company
1932
John Wesley Dobbs elected Grand Master of the Prince Hall Masons of Georgia
1956
Fortune calls Auburn Avenue the richest Negro street in the world
1976
Sweet Auburn designated a National Historic Landmark
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The South
Atlanta, Georgia · 1930s
Spoken by
Black Atlantans; named by John Wesley Dobbs and used citywide since
$SWEETAThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Steady96 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
62/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1930
in the culture
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
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Citations & Sources
■
Edward A. Hatfield, Auburn Avenue, New Georgia Encyclopedia, University of Georgia Press and Georgia Humanities
glossary
■
Fortune, 1956, describing Auburn Avenue as the richest Negro street in the world
newspaper
■
Gary M. Pomerantz, Where Peachtree Meets Sweet Auburn: The Saga of Two Families and the Making of Atlanta (Scribner, 1996)
book
■
Clifford M. Kuhn, Harlon E. Joye and E. Bernard West, Living Atlanta: An Oral History of the City, 1914–1948 (University of Georgia Press, 1990)
oral history
■
+ Cite a sourceJohn Wesley Dobbs, New Georgia Encyclopedia
glossary
See also