Darktown

Darktown was an African-American neighborhood in Atlanta, Georgia. It stretched from Peachtree Street and Collins Street (now Courtland Street), past Butler Ave. (now Jesse Hill Jr. Ave.) to Jackson Street.^[1] It referred to the blocks above Auburn Avenue in what is now Downtown Atlanta and the Sweet Auburn neighborhood. Darktown was characterized in the 1930s as a "hell-hole of squalor, degradation, sickness, crime and misery".^[2]

The term "darktown" was also used generically in Atlanta and the rest of the South to refer to African-American districts. It is used as such in the title of the famous song Darktown Strutters' Ball.^[3]

References

1. Barrelhouse Words: A Blues Dialect Dictionary By Stephen Calt, p.69
2. The separate city: Black communities in the Urban South, 1940-1968, p.130, Christopher Silver, John V. Moeser
3. The separate city: Black communities in the Urban South, 1940-1968, p.130, Christopher Silver, John V. Moeser

Coordinates: 33°45′38″N 84°22′54″W / 33.760592°N 84.381572°W