Buttermilk Bottom and Atlanta Civic Center
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When urban renewal threatened the destruction of Buttermilk Bottom, residences and businesses such as Forrest Shoe Shop were abandoned.
Courtesy of the Atlanta History Center, Boyd Lewis Photographs.
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This photograph from 1965 shows the demolition of Buttermilk Bottom for an urban renewal project.
Courtesy of the Atlanta History Center, Ross Ingram Photographs, circa 1885-1969, undated, bulk 1964-1969.
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This 1967 photograph shows the Atlanta Civic Center under construction on the site of the neighborhood once known as Buttermilk Bottom. The neighborhood was renamed Bedford Pine.
Courtesy of the Atlanta History Center, Cortlandt F. Luce, Jr. Photographs, 1948-1988, undated.
Urban renewal projects disproportionately targeted Black neighborhoods for redevelopment. This was partly due to a perception by white residents that such neighborhoods were dirty and unsafe. Buttermilk Bottom, a working class community in what is now known as Midtown Atlanta, was considered a slum in the mid-twentieth century. An article from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution described the neighborhood as “a blot on the community conscience” and “no fit place for people to live.” In 1963 Mayor Ivan Allen, Jr. unveiled plans to redevelop Buttermilk Bottom using federal urban renewal bonds. The redevelopment project forced the neighborhood’s residents to move, businesses to shutter, and a school to close. Rather than replacing Buttermilk Bottom with new public housing, Allen decided to develop the land for the construction of a new civic center, with an auditorium and exhibition hall. In 1967 the Atlanta Civic Center complex was completed on the former site of Buttermilk Bottom, and the neighborhood was rechristened Bedford Pine. In the following year, protests against urban renewal and the displacement of Buttermilk Bottom residents coincided with national race riots in the aftermath of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.