For decades, Sweet Auburn was Atlanta’s black downtown - a city within a city where African Americans created the institutions they were excluded from by white Atlanta. Though the construction of I-75/85 in the 1940s cut the neighbourhood in half, it became the hub of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s and has remained the centre of Atlanta’s black life and culture.

Several of the neighbourhood’s early 20th-century churches, homes and commercial buildings are in good shape, making for an excellent walking tour. One of them houses the African American Panoramic Experience, known as Apex, which has several exhibits on the area’s history and a movie about the neighbourhood. Several blocks of Auburn Avenue have been designated part of the Martin Luther King Jr National Historic Site, in honour of the civil rights leader who was born here in 1929. King’s birthplace is open for tours.

A block west is Ebenezer Baptist Church, where King preached. Across the street is the Martin Luther King Jr Centre for Non-Violent Change, which has a visitor’s centre and exhibits on the civil right’s campaigner’s life and work. King’s tomb is on view at the site.

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