- Neighborhood
- Segregation
- 1900 onward
- DeKalb County
- General area only
Scottdale's Black community
A mill town founded around the Scottdale Mills in 1900, split by the railroad tracks, with a Black community on its own side.
The record
The Scott Investment Company established the mill in 1900. A DeKalb History Center oral-history record says the community was divided by the railroad tracks. Black families such as the Heards, Moses, Lees, Shaws, Aikens and Kilgos lived on streets including Robinson Avenue, Pressley, Franklin, Green and Gibbons. Norma Gay Winchester sold lots for $100, $5 down and $1 a week. Its churches included St. Stephen's A.M.E. (first organized as Williams Temple) and Old Chapel Baptist (1897). The community's school, the Avondale Colored School (1924), later Hamilton High, closed under the 1969 court order.
Today: An unincorporated DeKalb community; the county's Hamilton Recreation Center keeps the school's name.
Where on the map: Scottdale, east of Decatur; the Black section's exact extent is not mapped here.