Displaced and Erased: The Black Experience in Decatur is a walking tour designed for the National Council on Public History conference, scheduled to be held in Atlanta, March 18-21, 2020. Due to public health concerns over the spreading COVID-19 virus, the NCPH canceled the in-person conference.

This page includes an ArcGIS storymap (see directly below) with the tour route and stops. Below the map, visitors can view historical images tour participants would have seen during the event as well as other photos and maps not included in the iPad version.

[Open the storymap in a new window]

The storymap may be used on a mobile phone or tablet for independent self-paced and self-guided tours.

Download the tour book [PDF]

Tour Stops:

• Courthouse Square
• Decatur City Hall
• Decatur High School
• Commerce and Howard Intersection
• Swanton Heights Apartments
• Robin and Commerce Intersection
• Former Trinity Presbyterian Church (266 Robin Street)
• Robin and Electric Intersection
• Lilly Hill Baptist Church (344 Robin Street)
• Ebster Park
• Beacon Municipal Complex
• Trinity Walk Apartments

This tour documents the consequences of anti-Black racism in the city of Decatur, Georgia, and how that racism intersects with how the city tells its history. Though there is a lot of history presented in this tour, its focus is on the racially biased acts by Decatur city officials and white residents against the city’s Black residents. Decatur’s African American residents don’t need a white historian to tell the stories of their families, heroes, villains, homes, businesses, churches, and recreational spaces and I have attempted to keep that history to a minimum in this presentation. Where I do attempt to convey Black history in Decatur it is done to contextualize acts of racism by Decatur’s white residents and city leaders.

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[A] Decatur Courthouse Square

Confederate Monument

Decatur is a typical Southern courthouse square town. Prominent landmarks include a Confederate monument (1908) and a contextualizing marker (2019), artifacts and markers celebrating DeKalb County history, and a municipal bandstand (1996) dedicated to late bank president J. Robin Harris (1925-1989).

On June 12, 2020, a DeKalb County judge declared the Decatur Confederate monument “a threat to public safety” and ordered it removed before June 26, 2020. Crews removed the monument overnight June 18-19, 2020.

Decatur Community Bandstand

Completed in 1996 after a protracted fight pitting Decatur city officials with advocates who wanted to preserve the historic square’s cultural landscape and viewscape. The bandstand is dedicated to former state legislator, city commissioner, and bank president J. Robin Harris (1925-1989). Harris was president of Decatur Federal Savings and Loan Bank (est. 1927). In 1962, the bank built Decatur’s first tall office building on Ponce de Leon (it also was DeKalb County tallest building when it was completed). It was the City of Decatur’s municipal bank for many years. In 1992, the U.S. Department of Justice charged the bank with discriminatory lending and hiring practices. A landmark settlement decree (1992) required the bank to comply with the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 by lending to more African Americans and it required the bank to hire more African Americans. In 2012, I interviewed a lifelong Decatur resident and I asked him about the bank. He (and others) told me that many Black Decaturites despised the bank for its lending practices. The bank so offended him that he told me that whenever he walks along the stretch of Ponce de Leon  where the bank’s building is located, he crosses the street to avoid being in the same block as the building.

Most white Decaturites would prefer to forget the Decatur Federal case and the bank’s widespread discrimination against African Americans. For Blacks who sought mortgages and other loans from the institution, forgetting and forgiving isn’t so simple. One lifelong Decatur resident recalled in 2012:

I never liked them. I’m going to be honest with you. I never cared for Decatur Federal of course my money is in there now, what is it, Wachovia – it was Wachovia, what is it now? Wells Fargo.

I don’t think the Black community was real vested in Decatur Federal. I don’t think they were real vested in Decatur Federal. We went more to First National, at that time was down the street … You couldn’t get a loan – I don’t think you, being Black, you couldn’t get a loan from Decatur Federal. That’s why a lot of blacks went to First National because Decatur Federal

In an off-microphone conversation he told me that he continued to cross the street whenever he approached the Decatur Federal building to avoid sharing the same space with it.

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[B] Decatur City Hall

This local landmark was designed by William Sayward of the firm of Edwards and Sayward and was completed in 1926. It is a contributing element to the Decatur Downtown Historic District (National Register of Historic Places, 2012). Notable points of interest include a 1937 monument declaring Decatur as the “City of Homes, Schools, and Churches.” Visible to the southeast is the former site of Antioch A.M.E. Church (new mixed-use development).

Like other cities throughout the United States, Decatur enacted laws creating racially segregated parts of the city. The first attempt was in 1915 when the city enacted a racial zoning law creating blocks restricted for whites and others for Blacks.

Decatur’s second attempt to enforce housing segregation occurred in 1938 when the city council enacted an ordinance prohibiting Blacks and whites from living in the same household.

The city’s motto, “City of Homes, Schools, and Churches,” takes on new significance when viewed in context. Between 1902 and 1932, the City of Decatur had a Tuesday through Saturday school week. Decatur author Tom Keating documented the unusual practice in a 1999 book and he found compelling evidence that the atypical school week reflected the city’s anti-Semitism. “Saturday school” would have meant observant Jews would have sent their children to school on the Jewish sabbath. The 30-year Tuesday through Saturday school week discouraged observant Jews from moving to and living in Decatur.

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[C] Decatur High School

Decatur originally had high schools for the city’s white boys and girls. The current school was completed in 1965 as part of the downtown redevelopment project that included the urban renewal of the Beacon Community. Decatur High School is a contributing element in the Decatur Downtown Historic District (National Register of Historic Places, 2012). The modernist building was designed by noted architects Bothwell and Nash.

Historic preservationists citied the school’s architecture as the only reason to Gerrymander the historic district’s boundaries to include the property. No buildings or spaces in the historically Black neighborhood that abuts the high school property to the west has been designated historic under local, state, or federal historic preservation programs.

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[D] Commerce and Howard Intersection

This intersection didn’t exist before the 1960s. It was created during urban renewal when the City of Decatur extended then-Oliver Street south to Howard. Visible to the south is Carl G. Renfroe Middle School.

This is Decatur’s only middle school. It is named for educator Carl G. Renfroe (1910-2004), who was Decatur’s school superintendent (1959-1975). Despite serving after the Brown v. Board of Education case (1954) Renfroe resisted desegregating city schools and is remembered by residents for racially biased decisions and language.

It was an embarrassing situation for me to be sitting during my graduation and the superintendent of the school system, Carl Renfroe, spoke and commented that evening, “We are proud of our nigras,” you know.

“We are proud of our nigras.” — R.L, Decatur resident and former Trinity High School student, February 2018 interview with David Rotenstein.

I just have to say that that brought to mind a sense of irony because when we were first there, the superintendent, Renfroe, was of the old school and he did everything he could to keep black and white children separated. — William Denton, former Decatur resident and civil rights activist, February 2018 interview with David Rotenstein.

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[E] Swanton Heights Apartments

The Swanton Heights apartments were built during urban renewal. The city assembled the property by combining lots with existing single-family homes and the unsurfaced White Street into a single consolidated parcel. There is an imposing wall and fence in the back that separates the property from a historically white housing area. Features such as these were common in cities where Black spaces intersected white ones. Historian Kevin Kruse in his research on white flight documented street barricades in West Atlanta and James Loewen, the historian and sociologist who pioneered research into sundown towns, documented them throughout the eastern United States.

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[F] Robin and Commerce

This intersection marks the southeast corner of the superblock created during slum clearance in 1940 to construct the 200-unit Allen Wilson Terrace public housing project (all African American), designed by the architectural firms Sayward & Logan (see Decatur City Hall) and Cooper & Cooper. Visible from this location is the Decatur High School football stadium and the redeveloped Allen Wilson Terrace apartments.

Commerce Street was originally named “Oliver Street.” Its namesake was an African American Decatur entrepreneur, Henry Oliver (1826-1904). In 1984, DeKalb County changed the name to correspond with community efforts to rebrand Decatur as business-friendly and successful. There have been efforts over the past decade to restore the street’s original name. Prior to urban renewal, this intersection was Oliver Street’s terminus.

The public housing complex recreation building was near this spot, across the street from the Decatur High School football stadium. Residents unable to attend the games would sit outside the building to watch the games. City officials built barriers to obstruct the views from the apartments to the stadium.

We used to have to watch Decatur High School play football from the hill — J.H., March 2016.
That was a hill and blacks used to sit on that hill and watch Decatur High play football because we weren’t allowed in there. So they would sit on the hill and watch the football games free until they started putting up things so that people couldn’t see — V.U., February 2018.

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[G] Former Trinity Presbyterian Church (266 Robin Street)

This church was constructed c. 1945 and it served families relocated to the Allen Wilson Terrace apartments. “I don’t know the name of it now but it was Trinity Presbyterian … They were on Oliver Street, that’s where they got started,” Elizabeth Wilson said in 2012. The former Allen Wilson Terrace apartments resident recalled living across the street: “When they built the church here, again houses was all along here … I used to live right there at 267 [Robin Street].”

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[H] Robin Street and Electric Avenue

This intersection marks the southwest corner of the Allen Wilson Terrace superblock. The Pearce family lived in a three-story frame home on the northwest corner that Beacon residents affectionately called the “Green Castle.” One former resident, V.U., vividly recalled the home in a 2018 interview: “They called it the castle because it was like it just needed repair but I think there were several families who lived in it and it was right on the corner of Robin and Electric Avenue. The Pierces lived there and several families.”

According to longtime residents, a low granite retaining wall extended along the south side of Robin Street, from its intersection with Oliver (Commerce) to Electric Avenue. They called the feature “The Brick Wall.” It features prominently in Beacon Hill memory narratives as a significant local landmark.

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[I] Lilly Hill Baptist Church (344 Robin Street)

Founded in 1913 in an unincorporated area just outside of Decatur, the church moved to the downtown in 1915 when it bought a lot on near- by Electric Avenue. The church outgrew its first building and in 1945 it bought two lots in Robin Street where it built this brick church. This church is the last surviving historic Black institution in the former Beacon Community. “Nothing standing other than Lilly Hill Baptist Church,” one congregant said in a 2018 interview. His family had founded the church.

In the second decade of the 21st century, Lilly Hill Baptist Church began facing displacement pressures. Another longtime congregant in 2018 said it was only a matter of time before white folks in Decatur set their sights on her church’s property. She recalled an episode from 2012 when Thankful Baptist Church (another historic Black congregation that was displaced in the 1960s to the city’s Oakhurst neighborhood) opposed the opening of a bar across the street from its property:

They’ve [whites] got — and they’re right close to it, you know, if you go by there now you’ll see they’ve got a little strip mall with some things in it and right up there on Mead Road they’ve got a bar and now they’re trying to take over the parking lot on the weekends and they want people to — probably have to get a policeman to stop them.

And I think even when you try to be nice, they take advantage. We opened our [Lilly Hill Baptist Church] parking lot to the people for the Fourth of July. They used to have fireworks on the Fourth of July memorial day and we opened up. Didn’t charge a dime. Opened up our parking lot for the people to come and park so they could walk two blocks to the thing. They left liquor bottles, sacks of food, plates. It was horrendous so we said no more. No more. It even got so bad, we can’t even use the park for like Vacation Bible School. We’ll put in for the park, you know what they’ll do? They’ll turn the sprinkler on so the park can’t be used. Okay.

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[J] Ebster Park

Prior to 1947, the City of Decatur labelled this space “the colored Park area.” In 1947, the city formally named it for an African American community leader, Donald G. Ebster (1874-1965). The park included a ball field and other outdoor recreation spaces in addition to a recreation building and swimming pool for all of Decatur’s African Americans (the city’s swimming pools were segregated). An Ebster descendant in 2013 said  that the park was a source of pride in his extended family because the family’s name was inscribed in a space that was otherwise defined by Jim Crow racism.

Tom Keating, the Decatur author who documented the city’s anti-Semitic Tuesday through Saturday school week recalled visiting the Ebster pool and the Jim Crow conditions that persisted there long after the civil rights era. Keating in 2012 described the Ebster pool that he first visited and compared it to the city’s other pools, the “white” pools as well as the “private” pools that developed near Decatur after discrimination in public accommodations was outlawed:

I went to a swimming pool and the lockers were horrible and the showers were gang showers, they called them. But we swam and we had fun. We loved swimming and the rec center. And the name just slipped me, but – and so then I discovered as I was wandering around that we had a lot of pools in this town of four square miles, one of which might have been called Uncle Tom’s Swimming Pool down near Glenwood. And then we had the famous Venetian Pool and then we had public pools, which when I came to town, we were in Venetian for a year and then we couldn’t afford it and so I basically at a certain point started being the only pale face at Ebster. And then I realized that there’s no place to put my clothes, so can we get some hooks? And two or three years later, we got the hooks and that’s the story now that it’s ongoing with a friend of mine who does all the things for active living, the director.

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[K] Beacon Municipal Complex

For the first half of the twentieth century, Decatur’s “colored school” was located in this space. After the 1954 Brown v. Board decision, the city built two “equalization schools” for African Americans: Beacon Elementary and Trinity High. The schools were demolished in 2013 and the city created interior and exterior interpretive spaces in the new municipal complex commemorating the erased African American community. The city’s trash incinerator was located directly across the street, south of the school.

Beacon demolition video

The redeveloped Beacon complex features indoor and outdoor interpretive spaces with photos, maps, and text panels that the city informs visitors tells the story of Black Decatur. Many lifelong Black Decaturites have a different view of the Black history under glass that the city created.

Beacon Elementary School (completed in 1955) and Trinity High School (completed in 1956) were older than Decatur High School. Unlike the high school, the two Black schools once located at this site were never nominated for listing in the National Register of Historic Places nor any other historical designation.

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[L] Trinity Walk Apartments (Gateway Apartments)

Originally developed as public housing in the 1960s urban renewal, this consolidated parcel replaced single family homes demolished during urban renewal. The city’s plans as it moved to implement the new urban renewal project was to relocate all remaining Black households outside the city limits. City leaders received vigorous pushback from Black pastors and from federal officials. Miraculously, despite earlier statements that no local land could be found to house the displaced people, city officials were able to build the Gateway apartments public housing.

The Gateway complex, like Allen Wilson Terrace, was redeveloped (2015-2018). Not having learned its lesson from the 1960s, Decatur city officials contemplated relocating families outside the city limits during the 21st century redevelopment. That plan would have required children living in the apartments to enroll in non-City of Decatur schools. Public outcries against disrupting the students’ education resulted in the city abandoning the temporary schooling proposal.

Before 1965, people standing in this location would have seen the original Thankful Baptist Church, an unsurfaced street called Bennett’s Alley, and the Swanton Branch, a stream where Beacon residents performed baptisms before urban renewal.

© 2020 D.S. Rotenstein. All photos and interviews unless otherwise indicated are by David S. Rotenstein. Information for this tour was compiled from research conducted between 2011 and 2018 for a book on gentrification and erasure in Decatur. Individual identities except for public figures have been concealed. Additional information on erasure and racism in Decatur, Georgia, may be found in “The Decatur Plan: Folklore, Historic Preservation, and the Black Experience in Gentrifying Spaces,” Journal of American Folklore, vol. 132, no. 526 (Fall 2019), pp. 431-451. Additional photos and video that complement the article are available at the Journal of American Folklore’s University of Illinois Press website.