Figure B-3: Buttermilk Bottoms, North Avenue and Bedford-Pine Urban Redevelopment Area (1959) Planning Atlanta: A New City in the Making, 1930s-1990s, City of Atlanta. Courtesy of Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library
Buttermilk Bottom shares its history with other Fourth Ward neighborhoods; Butler Street, Crescent Way, Irwin Street, and Auburn Avenue. These neighborhoods epitomize intersectional Black History: residential history, urban renewal policies, urban development, and race in Atlanta. Black neighborhoods east of the central business district were once bourgeoning over with residential properties and thriving businesses. The most heralded neighborhood and main street was Auburn Avenue. Auburn Avenue became the richest “Negro” Street in 1956 United States. Much of the neighborhood wealth was generated through the monetary reinvestments of the individuals and families who lived in the Fourth Ward neighborhoods, including the ones north of Auburn Avenue, Buttermilk Bottom, Butler Street, Crescent Way, and Irwin Street. The Fourth Ward was part of a former political system during the Aldermanic period in Atlanta’s government. Neighborhoods on the north side of the Fourth Ward, Buttermilk Bottom or Dark Town, Butler Street, Crescent Way, Irwin Street, made up what was recast as Bedford Pines in the 1960s during a grant application for federal redevelopment funding. 22 During the mid-20th century, as urban renewal policies began reshaping the spatial landscape of the United States, the expansion of highways, the development of new municipal buildings, and other infrastructural changes, led to the formation of new Black communities. Urban renewal displaced hundreds of thousands of predominantly Black people due to racism in housing and land use policies and embedded in planning. “Thousands of families were forcibly displaced, many without proper compensation, to erect loud, dangerous concrete barriers in the middle of neighborhoods. The result was a loss of cultural heritage, increased poverty, negative health outcomes, and heightened social inequality. The negative consequences of
22 Wood, “The Bedford Pine Neighborhood.” p. ii
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