attended First Congregational Church. Other type of cultural makers lived and worked in Buttermilk Bottom included: distillers, soft drink makers, crafts, industrial trades, and athletes. Racial segregation enacted by exclusionary zoning laws made Black settlements distinctive places within cities. The high density of people living in neighborhoods were commonplace. The 1950 Census indicated a total of 3,066 dwelling units were in Buttermilk Bottom: 86.1 percent were Black Atlantans, and 87.8 percent were renters (12.2 percent owned their property). 34 The presence of these residents contributed to supporting the commercial districts, small businesses, and entrepreneurs allowing them to flourish. In oral histories, people recount the significance of going into one of the Bailey Theaters for them, the role Black banks and insurance companies played in helping families, the role of restaurants as places of strategizing during the Civil Rights Movement, and the unmatchable nighttime entertainment district in Auburn Avenue. These ‘contained communities’ served as incubators for businesses, leadership development, and centers of cultural legacies. Contained communities subverted racial oppression by forming internal systems that offer connection, validation of one interiority and joy, sense of identity, power, and a shared sense of purpose. This is why when people respond to community life during Jim Crow and legal segregation, the post-Reconstruction period up to the Civil Right Acts in 1960s, the response singly identified the power of community in their lives. Being isolated from White society offered these communities autonomy to build neighborhoods that reflected their traditions and offered protection from surveillance. A specific Southern Black culture took root in which people incubated in shared experiences and the ingenuity of a largely rural and agrarian people seeking a better life, education, and the American Dream developed. In neighborhoods like Buttermilk Bottom and Butler Street, not only did Black people create a new life, but some also formed new identities. A cultural landscape feature were the house typologies in Buttermilk Bottom and Butler Street, the ‘shotgun’ house type. The shotgun house type has its roots in African architecture and is part of the material cultural heritage of the African Diaspora and more specifically Black people in the US South. 35 The shotgun is described as a small narrow house, usually one room wide and one to three rooms deep, a gable front roof, and either a front porch and/ or a rear porch. There are a number of configurations that are visible; double-shotgun (two rooms wide), camel-back (two-stories over the rear room). Some shotgun houses are of high design with embellishments on the front façade and porch railings. The linkages to the West Coast of Africa are complex. Due to the enslavement of African peoples, the cultural connection traveled through Haiti where shotgun houses were named “ caille”, traveled to New Orleans with the 34 Letter from R.A. Thompson, Housing Secretary, Atlanta Urban League to Atlanta Urban League Board of Directors, and Grace Towns Hamilton, Executive Director, The Atlanta Urban League Collection, Atlanta University Center Robert W. Woodruff Library and Archives Research Center. 35 John Michael Vlach, “The Shotgun House: And African Architectural Legacy”, Common Places: Readings in American Vernacular Architecture, Eds. Dell Upton and John Michael Vlach, University of Georgia Press, Athens, 1986, p.58.
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