Atlanta, Georgia

Auburn Avenue, known as “Sweet Auburn,” was the heart of Atlanta’s Black district during the mid-1900s. The city had long attracted Blacks from the surrounding rural country, and as their numbers swelled, Auburn became a vibrant cultural and economic center. Atlanta was home to a number of significant civil rights organizations, including Dr. King’s SCLC and SNCC. SNCC’s headquarters (first had 197 Auburn Avenue and then at 135 Auburn Avenue) coordinated the organization’s national support network and supplied its field workers with the resources to sustain the work of grassroots political organizing.

People


Events

James Forman leads singing in the SNCC office on Raymond Street in Atlanta, (from left) Mike Sayer, MacArthur Cotton, Forman, Marion Barry, Lester McKinney, Mike Thelwell, Lawrence Guyot, Judy Richardson, John Lewis, Jean Wheeler, and Julian Bond, Danny Lyon, Memories of the Southern Civil Rights Movement 123, dektol.wordpress.com


SNCC Press Release, “Agreement Settles Atlanta Sit-Ins,” January 6, 1964, Mary E. King Papers, WHS


Statement from SNCC in Support of Julian Bond, January 11, 1965, Mendy Samstein Papers, WHS