- Barrier
- Segregation
- Dec. 17–18, 1962 to Mar. 1, 1963
- City of Atlanta
- Location approximate
The Peyton Road and Harlan Road barricades
To keep Black homebuyers out of all-white Peyton Forest, the city put barricades across Peyton and Harlan roads south of Gordon Road. A court ordered them removed after 72 days.
The record
In August 1962 residents of the Peyton-Utoy Forest community asked Mayor Ivan Allen Jr. to make 'Peyton and Harlan Roads dead-end near Gordon Road, S. W.' and to rezone the south side of Gordon Road. The Board of Aldermen approved the closures on December 17, 1962, and crews put up the barriers the next day. Critics nicknamed them 'Atlanta's Berlin Wall'. On March 1, 1963 the Fulton County Superior Court found them unconstitutional, and the city took them down within minutes of the ruling. Allen later called them a grievous mistake. By late July 1963 only 15 white homeowners remained in Peyton Forest, and Cascade Heights was predominantly Black by the late 1960s.
Today: Peyton Rd and Harlan Rd are ordinary through streets in majority-Black southwest Atlanta. Gordon Road is now Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.
Where on the map: Two points: Peyton Rd SW and Harlan Rd SW, each just south of MLK Jr Dr SW (then Gordon Rd).