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Decatur Street is one of the original 7 streets of
File:Decatur Street Atlanta 1864.jpg, Decatur Street, late 1864
File:Decatur Street 19080110 AC.jpg, ''Atlanta Constitution'' 1908 article about a proposal to "regenerate" Decatur Street
File:Decatur Street 19091228 AC.jpg, ''Atlanta Constitution'' 1909 article about Decatur Street
File:Decatur Street 19120823 AC.jpg, ''Atlanta Constitution'' 1912 article about Decatur Street
Decatur Street is one of the original 7 streets of Atlanta, Georgia
Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,7 ...
; it was also a famous (and infamous) entertainment area from the 1850s through the early 20th century.
History
In 1854 the first theater in the city, the Athenaeum, opened on Decatur near Peachtree Street. In the early 20th century, it included anAfrican American
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...
entertainment district. In 1906 it was the trigger point of the Atlanta Race Riot
Violent attacks by armed mobs of White Americans against African Americans in Atlanta, Georgia, began on the evening of September 22, 1906, and lasted through September 24, 1906. The events were reported by newspapers around the world, includi ...
; allegations that the street's dive bars, frequented by blacks, were showing nude pictures of white women and "troublesome Negro vagrants" were hanging around there were among the allegations whipping up anti-black sentiment among poor whites.
After the riot, the ''Atlanta Constitution'' regularly ran stories documenting city efforts to clean up the street's dance halls, saloons, and dives; ragtime music; whiskey and drug peddling.
In 1909 the city nearly changed the name of the street to East Main Street in an effort to clean up the street's reputation.''Atlanta Constitution'', Dec. 28, 1909
At the start of the 1920s it was commemorated in the Clarence Williams song "Decatur Street Blues."
Today, Decatur Street cuts across the Georgia State University
Georgia State University (Georgia State, State, or GSU) is a public research university in Atlanta, Georgia. Founded in 1913, it is one of the University System of Georgia's four research universities. It is also the largest institution of hig ...
campus in the downtown area, while farther east it was part of a 1940s urban-renewal area that became Grady Homes, which were demolished in 2005 and replaced by the Ashley Auburn Pointe mixed-income community, now considered part of the Sweet Auburn neighborhood as it is officially defined. Its span across the Georgia State University campus includes a skyway
A skyway, skybridge, skywalk, or sky walkway is an elevated type of pedway connecting two or more buildings in an urban area, or connecting elevated points within mountainous recreational zones. Urban skyways very often take the form of enclo ...
that connects the two sides of its LCC-collated library, with the southern side housing only one class: Class Q -- Science, and the northern side houses all the others.
Gallery
See also
*References
External links
* {{Atlanta history Roads in Atlanta Entertainment districts in the United States Streets of African American history