Built in 1895, the brown and yellow Queen Anne style house sits close to the sidewalk, two stories rising straight from a narrow yard bordered by hedges trimmed even with the porch rail. The steps leading from the street are paved with concrete worn at the center where thousands of feet have walked the same path. The porch stretches across the front, held by thin, dark brown columns cut with ornamental designs, delicate enough to look hand-traced. Above it, the second floor projects forward beneath a steep roof, the windows shuttered as if the house still keeps its own hours.
They stand at the bottom of the stairs and look upward toward the narrow screen door that never needed to be large to hold the birth of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1929.
As a few stand in awe of the birth home of the civil rights icon, others move farther down the street. Because to experience the full sweetness of Auburn, you must keep walking.
Auburn Avenue continues into the part where daily living paused long enough to become ceremonial. Midway down the avenue stands a three-story building that opened its doors in 1940. The cornerstone had been laid three years earlier, in September 1937, after years of planning and fundraising by the Prince Hall Masons under Grand Master John Wesley Dobbs. The cost, reported at the time to be around $35,000, was covered by dues, collections, and persistent organizing during the Depression.
When the Atlanta Prince Hall Masonic Grand Lodge finally opened, tenants were already waiting to enter “The Jewel of Auburn Avenue.”
The ground floor is filled with services that people could not easily find elsewhere. North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Co. took space there, meeting families who arrived carrying small payments saved week by week. Lines formed of mothers waiting for their receipts. Proof of a paid policy meant a funeral would not further devastate a household.
Nearby, offices focused on civic work. The Atlanta Civic and Political League met in the building and registered thousands of Black voters during the 1930s and 1940s. Names were checked and checked again. The act of voting began here long before anyone approached a polling place.
Upstairs and the ground floor held smaller offices facing a corridor. On the Hillard Street side of the building, Lillie Bozeman opened The Madam C.J. Walker beauty school and salon in 1940. Customers came for hair care and left carrying neighborhood knowledge. Information traveled with each appointment.
Fraternal lodges met above and maintained benefit records for members and families. The Masonic Relief Association kept careful payment logs reaching back decades.
The building did not belong to one congregation or one profession. People from different churches and neighborhoods gathered there because it was one of the few non-denominational meeting places available to Black Atlantans at the time.
By the mid-20th century, more organizations arrived. Labor leaders from the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters held meetings there in 1944.
Political organizations and economic organizations shared the same stairwell.
In 1949, voices began leaving the building and entering homes across the city. Jesse B. Blayton Sr. purchased radio station WERD, the first Black-owned radio station in the United States. Announcements about businesses and announcements about meetings traveled through the same broadcast schedule. Listeners heard both without distinction.
The building expanded in 1955, adding storefronts along Hilliard Street and enlarging office space above.
More tenants arrived. A barber shop, a dentist, offices, and new meeting rooms filled quickly. Open house attendance exceeded 2,000 when the renovation was completed.
By then, Auburn Avenue carried both commerce and expectation.
In 1957, ministers gathered nearby to form what became the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. A few years later, in 1963, the organization moved its headquarters into the first floor and basement of the original 1937 building. At first, only a handful of staff worked there. Soon, the number grew as campaigns expanded across the South.
Visitors entered through the southeast corner vestibule and waited while secretaries checked schedules. Beyond them, desks filled the open office area. Andrew Young’s office sat between the reception area and King’s office near the northwest corner.
Upstairs, the radio station continued broadcasting. Messages prepared downstairs reached listeners quickly. Meetings held in one room became public knowledge the same day. By lowering a microphone through an open window, King would share his urgent messages.
Boycotts required car pools, gasoline, and maintenance. Bail required cash on short notice. Printing flyers required the purchase of paper and ink. Salaries allowed organizers to remain in the field. The businesses inside Prince Hall created a financial ecosystem that kept campaigns from collapsing between speeches.
Like many African American landmarks, the structure later deteriorated, but restoration returned more than walls. It restored the understanding that the Civil Rights Movement operated inside an economy. Sweet Auburn is remembered for sermons and marches, yet its endurance came from receipts, contracts, premiums, commissions, and advertisements handled in rooms along one corridor.
As the re-opening of the Prince Hall Mason Building this month, spreads across headlines and you smell the paint drying on the old walls, remember that inside these walls freedom is held: the Civil Rights Movement, the March on Washington, boycotts in Alabama, sit-ins in North Carolina, and wade-ins in Florida. As you walk the halls and turn the brass door knobs once touched by our historical figures, if you listen carefully, you can still hear it, the coins counted for insurance dues, hair dryers humming, typewriters drafting press releases, and a radio signal carrying instructions across the South. That was the economic sound of the Civil Rights Movement, on the grandest corner of the once richest Black street in America, on the sweet Auburn Avenue.
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