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April 2007Volume VI, No. 4
A Program of the Historic Preservation Division, Georgia Department of Natural Resources
COMMEMORATING SUMMER HILL:AN AFRICAN AMERICAN COMMUNITY IN CARTERSVILLE
Jeanne Cyriaque, African American Programs CoordinatorHistoric Preservation Division
continued on page 2
Summer Hill is a place filledwith significant memoriesfor the Cartersville African
American community. It was aplace where African Americans,regardless of their economiccircumstances, lived in a separatecommunity during segregation.Slab Stadium once existed inSummer Hill, where an AfricanAmerican entrepreneur hostedteams from the Negro baseballleague. Summer Hill was home toCartersville’s first black doctor,barbershops, and businesses. Itwas once home to Cartersville’sfirst gymnasium where AfricanAmericans from Bartow andsurrounding counties playedbasketball and competed for statechampionships. Summer Hill wasonce home to African Americanchurches of all denominations, anold Rosenwald School, shop, anda football field that the communitybuilt on the side of the hill.
Today, when citizensvisit the Summer Hill Educational& Recreational Complex onAubrey Street near the site of theold gymnasium and RosenwaldSchool, there is an impressivebronze statue of Professor J.S.Morgan and his wife, Beatrice.
James S. Morgan was a teacherand later principal of the SummerHill School from 1925-1962. Thestatue was unveiled on May 26,2006. The artist was Julia Knight.Hundreds of people attended theunveiling that included twoformer Georgia governors and washosted by Supreme Court JusticeRobert Benham, who onceattended the Summer Hill Schoolin Cartersville. At the base of thestatue is the inscription “He WhoThinks Can Conquer” andProfessor Morgan is pointing, asif illustrating a lesson or pep talkthat he often gave during theweekly assembly of students andteachers at Summer Hill. Inside thecomplex is a permanent exhibit thattells the story of the communitythat the Morgan family served inthis historic African Americanneighborhood in Cartersville.The Summer Hill Museumincludes memorabilia, familyheirlooms and donated artifactsalong with a wall-mounted exhibitof historical photos that depict theSummer Hill community from thelate 19th century to 1970. TheSummer Hill Foundation is thesteward for this collection today.This bronze statue of Professor James S. and Mrs. Beatrice Morgan
was designed by sculptor Julia Knight. The sculpture is located in theSummer Hill community in Cartersville. Photo by Jeanne Cyriaque
2
Jeanne Cyriaque, continued from page 1
COMMEMORATING SUMMER HILL: AN AFRICAN AMERICAN COMMUNITY IN CARTERSVILLE
In 2003, the Summer Hill community began a project todocument the story of this community. Students and faculty fromthe Department of History and Philosophy at Kennesaw StateUniversity (KSU) contacted families, alumni and former teachersfrom Summer Hill, and conducted an extensive oral history projectto collectively tell the story of the community. By May 2005 oralhistories were completed for 41 people who were identified asresidents in the Summer Hill census tract or were recommended bythe Etowah Area Consolidated Housing Authority. Students in theDocumentation and Interpretation class conducted 14 audiointerviews. Melissa Massey, project researcher, conductedsubsequent interviews with contacts who were identified in theinitial interviews. Dr. LeeAnn Lands of KSU was the projectcoordinator. She edited the interviews and partnered with formerand current residents of the Summer Hill community, the EtowahArea Consolidated Housing Authority and the Summer HillFoundation in this initiative. The results of these oral historieswere captured online in the Summer Hill Project at www.summer-hill.org with the support of the Anheuser-Busch and SummerHill Foundation(s).
Nancy Beasley was one of the persons the KSU studentsinterviewed. She is a Cartersville native, and once taught at theSummer Hill School. Mrs. Beasley has fond memories of thecommunity called Summer Hill where she grew up with one sister.Her father once worked at the local mine and later for city hall. Mrs.Beasley attended Fort Valley State University and worked in thesummers at the Guarantee Life Insurance Company in Atlanta writingpolicies. When she graduated, her first teaching assignment wasin an elementary school where she taught grades one through eight.The following year, she joined the faculty at Summer Hill, where shewas the English teacher and part-time librarian.
When asked about her fondest memories at Summer Hill,Mrs. Beasley praised Mrs. Morgan, who was an accomplishedpianist. “We learned a lot; we had excellent teachers and … justgreat high school courses. But the closeness of Summer Hill was ofsuch that you knew all the children, you knew their parents.” Mrs.Beasley vividly recalled how African American students could notattend Cartersville High School, so the community kept petitioningeach year for the additions of higher grades. In 1951, the year whenshe began teaching, they had 12 grades. Summer Hill also had acontractual agreement with Bartow County that bussed studentsfrom the rural areas to attend this city high school for AfricanAmericans.
Mrs. Beasley remembered the exact location of the SummerHill Rosenwald School. “It was a nice building. It had runningwater and it had toilets. Professor Morgan continued to build on tothe school and the building behind the school was the shop. So hetaught shop, industrial arts as they called it at the time.” During herlater tenure as an English teacher, she gave lots of homeworkassignments and sponsored the drama club. She taught at SummerHill for seventeen years until public school integration.
Leonard Moore remembered how the school termfluctuated during the harvest of cotton. Sometimes the SummerHill School closed because many of the students had to assist theirparents in picking cotton. “I loved Summer Hill. I really did. I wentto the old frame building … and I always wanted to go there. Webuilt our own gymnasium, believe it or not. We cherished that gym.All the teams from the surrounding counties…would come here forthe tournament. I was on the football team.” Leonard Moore
Alumni from the last graduating class are seated in front of thepermanent exhibit at the Summer Hill Museum. The exhibit is locatedin the recreational complex. Photo by Jeanne Cyriaque
The statue of the Morgans is placed above bricks that were donated byformer students and members of the Summer Hill community.
Photo by Jeanne Cyriaque
One of the panels in the permanent exhibit depicts images from theSummer Hill Rosenwald School. Photo by Jeanne Cyriaque
3This photo of the Summer Hill Rosenwald School Shop appeared in the1927 Georgia Department of Education annual report.
regretted the loss of the old Rosenwald School. “Our gym gotburned down, the gym that we built. It got burned down, but theschool stayed there. They decided, I guess, to tear the old schooldown, which I hate ... They should have let that thing stay there,because that was our second home. And that was really ourheritage, that school building. It was an old frame building, but itmeant something to us.”
Moore recalled the used books that the Summer Hillstudents received when the white schools got new ones. His wife,Celesta, credits her college training at Atlanta University withteaching her how to improvise and make her own teaching materials.So, when she later taught special education at Summer Hill, she wasprepared to deal with the challenge of teaching with inadequateschool supplies.
Georgia SupremeCourt Justice Robert Benham,his two brothers and bothparents attended Summer HillHigh School. “The teacherslived in our community and weinteracted with them, not onlyin school but in social, civicand religious activitiesthroughout my childhood,”said Benham. “Cartersville’sSummer Hill School was theonly black school at the timein north Georgia that even hadan auditorium. We were theonly school that had agymnasium… next to theschool… All of the cultural,civic, social, religious activitiestook place in the Summer HillSchool. We had a bandbecause the parents gottogether and we had to buyour own instruments and theparents made the uniforms.”
Benham commentedon other aspects of theSummer Hill School thatdiffered from Cartersville’swhite schools: “…the girlswere required to take a coursein home economics. The guyswere required to take a coursein shop. It was calledindustrial art. That was onlyrequired in the blackschools…” Both RobertBenham and Leonard Mooreremembered that the SummerHill School was located nextto the city dump. “Every daythe trash trucks would comeright by the school and next tothe school dump all of the trashfrom the city and then in theevening they would set it afire and the odor would waft all throughthe black community,” said Benham. Moore recollected that thelocation of the city dump did not change until a student was burnedaccidentally while playing near the trash.
The oral history interviews also brought out other aspectsof community life in Summer Hill. A number of African Americanbusinesses once existed in the downtown area until 1933, whenJohn Willie Clark was hung in downtown Cartersville by an angrywhite mob for allegedly murdering the police chief. After thisincident, African American businesses began to move to SummerHill. Paul Thomas, an African American businessman, ownedresidential property and operated Slab Stadium, Cartersville’s blackbaseball facility. Churches “were the glue” for the community, saidJustice Benham. They played an extremely important role duringthe Civil Rights movement, and doubled as schools. TheBrotherhood Lodge provided burials for community members. NewFrontiers was a men’s organization that was started in the 1960s torepresent the African American community’s interest in issues likeschool integration and city government.
The Summer Hill Heritage Committee hosted a two-partcelebration when the oral history project was unveiled at acommunity event. “Summer Hill: A Story of Community” is thedocumentary that was produced by David Hughes Duke. SunTrustBanks, Inc. sponsored the documentary. Other corporate partnersincluded Anheuser-Busch, Aflac, Joe Harris Jr. and the NorthwestGeorgia Community Foundation. These partners and the SummerHill Foundation sponsored the special screening of the documentaryand a panel discussion that featured some of the former teachers:Nancy Beasley, Celesta Moore and Susie Wheeler, students likeJustice Robert Benham and Leonard Moore, and the children ofProfessor and Mrs. J.S. Morgan. Students from Bartow Countyviewed the film screening. The documentary is available for $24.95and can be ordered online in VHS/DVD formats at the Summer Hillproject website: www.summer-hill.org.
COMMEMORATING SUMMER HILL: AN AFRICAN AMERICAN COMMUNITY IN CARTERSVILLE
Justice Robert Benham of the GeorgiaSupreme Court was the master ofceremony at the unveiling of the statueof Professor and Mrs. Morgan.
Photo by Jeanne Cyriaque
Teacher resource kits were createdas part of the Summer Hill Projectfor Bartow County students toexperience Summer Hill in theclassroom and on-site.
Photo by Jeanne Cyriaque
4
CAN I GET A WITNESS? A CALL AND RESPONSE TO CHANGE IN THE RURAL SOUTH
Hermina Glass-Avery, African American Programs AssistantHistoric Preservation Division
This photo of a Freedmen’s School in rural North Carolina appeared in theUniversity of California, Davis History Project Collection, and is cited inthe U.S. National Archives, Washington, D.C.
Call and response is an idiom of African and African Americanreligious and cultural traditions. It is a democratic
communication pattern where an orator or musician exchangesphrases with one another, as if in conversation. While call andresponse is found in many traditions, it fulfills the universal humanneed to be affirmed by another and it is quite apparent in manysouthern black churches. African American churches served dualfunctions as places of spiritual respite as well as sites of civicaction. In fact, churches served as places where an individual’sdesire for social change could be vocalized and put into action.Nowhere was this idea of ordinary citizens effecting social changemore evident than in the struggle for education for black children.
Long before emancipation, enslaved people always aspiredto educate themselves and their children. Whether through theassistance of abolitionists or stealing away to a literate slave’squarters, education was a cause for which many risked life and limbto acquire. In the post-bellum era, various organizations such asmissionary aid societies and fraternal lodges offered their meetingplaces as makeshift schools, pointing to their deep commitment toeducation, the drive of the teachers, and the resourcefulness of thecommunity. Schoolhouse construction was a community eventwith numerous families responding to the call for education forblack children. The manifestation of black schoolhouses on thesouthern landscape was a loud call for social change – calls that
rang out from former slaves and their descendants, farm ownersand sharecroppers, housekeepers and domestics, ministers,parishioners, and even the children themselves.
Threats by whites and legal sanctions that supported racialdiscrimination continued well into the 20th century. However, neitherJim Crow nor white supremacist tactics could dim the desire foreducation. Black schoolhouses were often beacons of hope formany communities despite their dismal conditions. Responding tothe idea that better schoolhouses would provide optimal learningconditions, Booker T. Washington, principal of Tuskegee Industrialand Normal Institute (presently Tuskegee University), and premier
champion of black self-help, developed a partnership with JuliusRosenwald, president of Sears, Roebuck and Company in 1912.Together, this educator and philanthropist developed a plan toaddress the state of African American education in the rural South.As a result of this partnership over five thousand schools werebuilt in rural towns from Maryland to Texas.
These schools that came to be called “RosenwaldSchools,” are symbolic of the desire for change in the rural southand are shining examples of what “education could do for you,”states 90-year old Dr. Susie Wheeler. In 1924, she attended theNoble Hill School, one of two Rosenwald Schools in Bartow County,Georgia. Located in the Cassville community, Noble Hill was awooden two-room structure incorporating a rectangular floor planthat featured a gabled front façade with a projecting industrial roomflanked on both sides with a vestibule and a cloakroom. Typical ofthe two-room design plans of the Rosenwald Fund’s CommunitySchool Plans there were standard tall battery windows located onthe east and west sides of the building to take advantage of naturallight and cross-ventilation.
Dr. Susie Weems Wheeler is a witness to the changesthat have occurred in small rural towns and she can attest to theinfluence that early black and white civic leaders had in calling formeasures to address the problems of black education. Her life istestimony to what could become of black children when they wereprovided opportunities in the best educational environment. Sheexcelled far beyond her dreams to become a schoolteacher whenshe was selected to become a Jeanes Supervisor in 1946, a positionthat afforded her an opportunity to impact the lives of thousandsof black children. The spry nonagenarian recalled with clarity herexperiences attending Noble Hill:
“Noble Hill was my school. I started there in the firstgrade. We had a beautiful time and we enjoyed one another. I musthave been six years old, no five at the beginning. Our parents gotus to school even when the weather was not so well. I was inspiredto be a teacher from my first grade teacher. She was Mrs. Williams.She was the first grade teacher and her husband was in the other
Dr. Susie WheelerPhoto by Jeanne Cyriaque
55
During the time between when I graduated and was offeredthis job, we had to do the county examination to pass for a teacherafter you finished high school. So, I did that after I finished thisassignment. That’s when I became a full-time teacher…at CassvilleElementary… the first, second, and third grade. I was there nineyears. But, during the nine years, a lot of changes took place interms of my own education…because I saw myself moving towardsa degree. Of course, that meant summer school. When I leftAdairsville, I had gotten married…and my husband had gone tothe service and I went back to school at Fort Valley State. I hadbeen going to summer school at Atlanta University and I went onback to Fort Valley with the hope that I could finish my collegeeducation. And I did. (She graduated from Fort Valley StateUniversity in 1945.)
In 1946, in fact, I was approached to become a trainingperson for Jeanes supervision at Fort Valley State. I had to take thecourses for Jeanes supervision to become one. It would take meelsewhere, not to Bartow County. But at that time, we had a whiteperson who served in the state as a guide for black educators andhe was the one who said to me, ‘Go ahead and take the course andI will try to get you a school – a teaching position in Cartersville.And then next summer you can finish and I’ll see if I can get youinto supervision in the northern part of the state…because youdon’t want to go to the southern part.’ And that’s how I got intosupervision. I taught one year after finishing college at SummerHill High School. I taught the sixth grade. When it was decidedthat Bartow County would become a part of the Jeanes supervisionprogram…Cartersville was selected as a part of this Jeanessupervision for this northern section of Georgia.
I looked at whatJeanes Supervisors weresupposed to do. And onething was to improvecurriculum. So, naturally Iworked in that area. Not onlythat, I had this position thatwas sort of like a blacksuperintendent. And I had tohelp get black teachers for therural schools and I had to helptry to improve the schools. Iended up being kind of likethe assistant superintendent.One thing, at that time, we werenot getting supplies, teachingsupplies. There was thislimitation for the rural schoolsbecause they didn’t have
supplies to work with. At that time, it seems that what we got wasold used materials. So, one of my problems was trying to find outhow to get new materials. First, I dealt with the state to find outwhat were the possibilities. Once I got the possibilities, I followedthrough. And some sources did respond and some did not respond.Then the county began to do better with allowing certain amounts
Susie Wheeler was in this first class of the Noble Hill School when it openedin 1924. Photo courtesy of the Noble Hill-Wheeler Memorial Center
grades at that time. And I would say, ‘I’d like to be like her.’ Andon from there my mother encouraged me to become ateacher…because I would tell her that I would like to become one.And I think that’s how I became aware of what education would dofor you and what you had to do to get education.
We all came to Cartersville High, (Summer Hill) becauseat that time, to go to a high school we had to leave the rural schoolto go to a city school. And of course, the city schools didn’t havebut nine grades. But we came. You know, I always would rememberthe fact that I was a little rural girl and they thought rural girls couldnot do as well as city girls. So that meant I worked harder tobecome a student respected for what I knew. They made me feeldifferent. So, I tried harder to succeed and did succeed. Of course,I was the salutatorian when I left that school in ninth grade.
I did continue school, but I had to go away to Griffin,Georgia…the Cabin Creek High School was where I went to finishthose other three years. It was a boarding school, and I was referredto that school by the principal at Cartersville High (Summer Hill)and his wife. I believe she was formerly from Griffin and she knewabout this Cabin Creek School that was sponsored by the Baptistchurch. My parents paid for part of it. And I worked to pay a partfor myself.
I was trying to prepare myself to become a teacher. Andyet, preparation was very expensive. Whenever I came back home,whatever my mom was involved in I got involved in, too. Washingthe clothing for white families or ironing the clothes for whitefamilies, or doing little jobs of that nature. I finished high school in’35 and I taught six months in Calhoun, Georgia. And that wasbecause the teacher …got ill and couldn’t finish the year. So, Ifinished out her year as my first experience. Evidently, it was knownto the community that there was a need and someone must haverecommended me, even though I had just finished high school. Atthat time, when you finished high school you could teach. I movedthere for a five-day period and came home on the weekend. I thinkit was twenty-five dollars a month I was paid when I started on aregular basis.
This photo of Dr. Susie Wheelerappeared in Jeanes Supervision inGeorgia Schools.
continued on page 6
CAN I GET A WITNESS? A CALL AND RESPONSE TO CHANGE IN THE RURAL SOUTH
6
REMEMBERING THE
1906 ATLANTA RACE RIOT
In his poem A Litany of Atlanta W. E. B. DuBois penned thesewords after hearing of the outbreak of a bloody race riot in Atlanta:
“A city lay in travail, God ourLord, and from her loins sprangtwin Murder and Black hate.Red was the midnight; clang,crack and cry of death and furyfilled the air and trembledunderneath the stars whenchurch spires pointed silentlyto Thee.” It erupted on thenight of September 22, 1906 indowntown and festered into aviolent four-day upheaval thatwould leave a lasting mark onAtlanta, the South’s Gate City.
Events leading to theriot began months earlier in a fierce Democratic gubernatorial race.Lead candidates Hoke Smith, former editor of the Atlanta Journal
Linda Cooks, Steering CommitteeGeorgia African American Historic Preservation Network
This circa 1906 Atlanta streetscene depicts the Henry Gradystatue that still exists on MariettaStreet today. Photo courtesy of theSpecial Co l l ec t ions Depar tmen t ,Georgia State University Library
Hermina Glass-Avery, continued from page 5
CAN I GET A WITNESS?A CALL AND RESPONSE TO CHANGE
IN THE RURAL SOUTH
In 1955, the Bartow County Board of Educationconsolidated the Noble Hill School along with several others intothe county school system. The school building lay dormant formore than 25 years until 1983 when Dr. Susie Wheeler originatedthe idea to preserve her former alma mater. She worked tirelesslywith her sister-in-law, Bertha Wheeler, to donate the land to theNoble-Hill Wheeler Memorial Foundation. With the help of thefoundation’s trustees who raised over $200,000, the old schoolbuilding that once stood at the center of black life in Cassville wassaved as an important reminder of how architecture, whether formalor vernacular, private or civic, has the ability to respond to the callfor social change. The Noble Hill-Wheeler Memorial Centercurrently serves as a heritage museum in Bartow County. It is openTuesday through Saturday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. For moreinformation, call 770/382-3392.
of funds for purchasing supplies because they knew I was lookingat the purchases of the white schools. So they began to make thenew materials available for our schools as well.
As Jeanes Supervisors, as we grew we organized ourgroup so we could share with one another what was going on orwhat was not going on. That’s how we kept in touch. We alsohad state helpers at that time. Most of them had less materialthan we had, and they didn’t have the support of thesuperintendents like they wanted or the Board of Education.They were lacking in opportunities to do what they felt theyneeded to do. Anything that I was told or that I began to know,I would share with my teachers.
In the winter of 1949, a vocational program was held at the Summer HillSchool. The group in this photo who attended the program included fromleft to right: Principal J.S. Morgan, teacher John Anderson, guest speakerDr. Cornelius V. Troup, Jeanes Supervisor Susie W. Wheeler, teacherRandolph Wesley and Mrs. Beatrice Morgan. Photo courtesy of the NobleHill-Wheeler Memorial Foundation.
As time went on, things changed and opportunitieschanged. Our superintendent, he was very supportive. Of course,you know superintendents were still white. I tried not to be tooselfish – that is, to have all the things happen to black schools withnothing in particular happening in the white schools. And theybegan to see what was happening in the black schools and it madethem interested in calling me, getting in touch, finding out how todo some of the other things. Quality was one thing, but we hadimproved our black schools to the point that there was a questionamong the white schools as to why were getting ahead so muchfaster. And that was the thing that, I think, encouraged integration.And our superintendent was for this. And by the way, at that timeif you were integrating, you would be set up for more funding fromsources. And of course, that made my superintendent ready to dothat. It was through this superintendent that we got things done.He believed that integration was something we should strive for.”
The Noble Hill Rosenwald School was listed in the National Register ofHistoric Places on July 2, 1987. Photo by Jeanne Cyriaque
Hermina Glass-AveryAfrican American
Programs AssistantVoice 404/657-1054Fax 404/657-1040
7
Velmon AllenKarl Webster Barnes
C. Donald BeallLinda Cooks
Gerald GoldenTerry & Cynthia Hayes
Kris RobertsCorinne Blencoe Thornton
Linda WilkesThomas Williams
Isaac Johnson, Chair706/738-1901
Beth Shorthouse, Vice-Chair404/253-1488
Jeanne Mills, Secretary404/753-6265
STEERING
COMMITTEE
Jeanne CyriaqueAfrican American
Programs CoordinatorReflections EditorVoice 404/656-4768Fax 404/657-1040
STAFF
and later Clark Howell, editor of The Atlanta Constitution, builttheir campaign platforms on the promotion of African Americanpolitical and social disenfranchisement. At the same time, racialtensions increased in the city as local newspapers began printing aseries of unfounded stories of attacks on white women by blackmen, prompting a “Negro crime” scare. Rage came to a head onSaturday night, September 22nd when thousands of white men andboys led vicious attacks against unsuspecting African Americanmen and women in the downtown area while they were walking thestreets, working in downtown businesses and riding in streetcars.Attacks continued throughout the city for the next three days.At the end of the riot at least 25 blacks were killed accordingto the Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution.
Though faded from the public memory of most Atlantanstoday, the impact of this horrific event had a lasting influence onthe city’s commercial and residential neighborhood patterns, politicalpolicy and race relations. Many African Americans left the citywhile others residing inside the downtown area relocated theirhomes and businesses to the Auburn Avenue neighborhood andother areas of the city. Not only were segregated neighborhoodsredefined, but Jim Crow laws in the city escalated, further promotingthe separation of races. The culmination of this riot also marked thebeginning of an Atlanta tradition of interracial cooperation betweenwhite and black civic, business and religious leaders in an effort toresolve social and political issues that stained the city’s image.
There are a number of notable sites affiliated with the 1906Atlanta Race Riot. Five Points is a landmark downtown intersectionwhere violent white crowds gathered before chasing and attackingblacks on surrounding downtown streets. Near the Henry Gradystatue on Marietta Street, rioters paraded and laid the beaten andbloody bodies of three slain black victims. South View Cemetery isthe resting place of many of the African American victims of the
riot. Brownsville (now known asSouth Atlanta) was a black upper-class neighborhood that armedand defended itself against whiterioters who raided their communityon Monday, September 24, 1906.The Gammon TheologicalSeminary/Clark University(now the campus of the NewSchools of George WashingtonCarver) was formerly located inthis neighborhood.
In preparation for thecentennial anniversary of the 1906Riot, the Coalition to Rememberthe 1906 Atlanta Race Riotsponsored a variety of projectssuch as archival research, oralhistory interviews, walking tours ofthe Five Points area, lectures anddiscussions to increase public
awareness of the riot, spur dialogue in the community regardingthis little known episode in Atlanta’s history, and encouragereconciliation. An exhibit entitled Red Was the Midnight openedat the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site in Atlanta on
September 15, 2006 and isavailable for public viewingthrough August 2007. Thepublic also participated in aCentennial Remembranceweekend on September 21through September 24, 2006.Events included paneldiscussions, presentations, artperformances and exhibitsthroughout the downtownarea. For more informationregarding the 1906 AtlantaRace Riot and commemorativeevents, log onto http://www.1906atlantaraceriot.org.
Three African Americans werekilled during the 1906 AtlantaRace Riot near the site of the HenryGrady statue on Marietta Street. Photo by Jeanne Cyriaque
Clifford Kuhn and Clarissa Myrick-Harris discussed the 1906 AtlantaRace Riot during their educationalsession at the African AmericanPreservation Alliance conference inMemphis. Photo by Jeanne Cyriaque
Isaac JohnsonChairman
The Georgia African American Historic Preservation Network (GAAHPN)was established in January 1989. It is composed of representatives fromneighborhood organizations and preservation groups. GAAHPN was formed
in response to a growing interest in preserving the cultural and ethnic diversity ofGeorgia’s African American heritage. This interest has translated into a number ofefforts which emphasize greater recognition of African American culture andcontributions to Georgia’s history. The GAAHPN Steering Committee meets regularlyto plan and implement ways to develop programs that will foster heritage education,neighborhood revitalization, and support community and economic development.
The Network is an informal group of over 2,300 people who have an interest inpreservation. Members are briefed on the status of current and planned projects and areencouraged to offer ideas, comments and suggestions. The meetings provide anopportunity to share and learn from the preservation experience of others and to receivetechnical information through workshops. Members receive a newsletter, Reflections,produced by the Network. Visit the Historic Preservation Division website atwww.gashpo.org. Preservation information and previous issues of Reflections areavailable online. Membership in the Network is free and open to all.
ABOUT GAAHPN
This publication has been financed in part with federalfunds from the National Park Service, Department of theInterior, through the Historic Preservation Division,Georgia Department of Natural Resources. The contentsand opinions do not necessarily reflect the views orpolicies of the Department of the Interior, nor does themention of trade names, commercial products orconsultants constitute endorsement or recommendationby the Department of the Interior or the GeorgiaDepartment of Natural Resources. The Departmentof the Interior prohibits discrimination on the basisof race, color, national origin, or disability in itsfederally assisted programs. If you believe you havebeen discriminated against in any program, activity, orfacility, or if you desire more information, write to: Officefor Equal Opportunity, National Park Service, 1849 CStreet, NW, Washington, D.C. 20240.
Published quarterly by theHistoric Preservation Division
Georgia Department of Natural Resources
W. Ray Luce, Division Director &Deputy State Historic Preservation Officer
Jeanne Cyriaque, Editor
A Program of theHistoric Preservation DivisionGeorgia Department of Natural Resources34 Peachtree Street, NWSuite 1600Atlanta, GA 30303-2316
