The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story

by Nikole Hannah-Jones

But wealthy Black enclaves were targeted as well. Auburn Avenue, which once housed so many Black-owned businesses that Fortune magazine called it “the richest Negro street in the world,” was devastated by the creation of the Downtown Connector.6 “Sweet Auburn,” the home to prominent institutions like Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, had long stood as the core of Black Atlanta, but the intrusions of the interstate proved to be a “deathblow,” in the words of one local.7 The original plans for the Downtown Connector plotted a path directly through the headquarters of the Atlanta Life Insurance Company, the crown jewel of the city’s Black business community. The objections of Black leaders succeeded in shifting the route a few blocks east, but the highway still tore through Auburn Avenue, displacing residents and destroying businesses.8 This common practice of steering new interstates through minority neighborhoods—rich and poor alike—was repeated across the South in cities like Charlotte, Houston, Jacksonville, Miami, Montgomery, Nashville, New Orleans, Richmond, and Tampa.