Excerpt from Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site: Historic Resource Study

Few nationally significant civil rights activities occurred under King's mantle in Atlanta. However, King served upon the governing board of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (sclc), headquartered in Atlanta, participated in a lunch counter boycott at Rich's department store, a well-known Atlanta commercial establishment, and supported black Atlanta union members in a strike. King's best known and most effective civil protests occurred outside Atlanta, particularly in Alabama, where blacks wielded little economic, social, or political power.

Nevertheless, the black commercial and residential district centered around Auburn Avenue and the prominent black religious institutions in the community had a lasting impact on King and other black community leaders. Throughout the South, civil rights activities relied on strong communities and outspoken religious leaders. Auburn Avenue and its surrounding black residential areas developed as a direct result of segregationist policies common throughout nineteenth and twentieth-century southern urban centers. Within this milieu of hardship, black economic, cultural, and political institutions waxed, and in some cases, flourished. Auburn Avenue's vitality surpassed that achieved by many southern black communities. This unique community greatly influenced the life path chosen by King, to challenge racism, poverty, and the denial of black civil rights.

Auburn Avenue and its coterminous residential community developed as a stronghold of black Atlanta politics, commerce, spirituality, and social life. Sweet Auburn described the corridor east of Peachtree to Howell Avenue and north of Auburn to Houston Street. Edgewood Avenue, located just south of Auburn Avenue, developed later predominantly as a white commercial corridor. On both avenues, access to the central business district to the 'west via horse cars, streetcars, and eventually, private automobiles greatly augmented their growth (photograph l). The first settlers along Auburn Avenue differed greatly in race and class from subsequent residents. In nineteenth-century cities, the elite occupied the residential areas located within walking distance of the central business district. As the Atlanta city limits widened from one concentric mile in the 18405 to one and one-half miles in the 18905, elite residential settlement branched out, and patterns of settlement along Auburn Avenue changed. The avenue was predominantly black by 1910.

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