W. E. B. Du Bois was not the only notable eyewitness to history in 1906. Thirteen-year-old Walter White, who would later become secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), had accompanied his father, a mail collector, on his rounds in downtown Atlanta. White recalled that he had become immune to the inflammatory accounts of alleged rapes committed by black men that were printed in the newspapers almost daily. However, an uptick in the frequency and length of such stories, combined with heightened tensions surrounding a bitter, racially charged gubernatorial campaign and a dramatization of Thomas Dixon’s The Clansman in Atlanta created a perfect storm for the violence that erupted in September 1906. White witnessed the murder of Herndon’s employee by the white mob and that evening helped his father defend their home. He later wrote, “I became much older during the next thirty-six hours, under circumstances which I now recognize as the inevitable outcome of what had preceded.”
The riot hardened the lines of segregation in the city. Many black business owners relocated from the downtown business district to Auburn Avenue, which formed the foundation of what Fortune magazine would later call “the richest Negro street in the world.” By Thursday, September 27, the Atlanta Constitution reported that “With all her manufacturing plants running, every store in town full of busy shoppers, and the streets crowded with women and children, Atlanta presented a picture yesterday which was anything but that of the riot ridden city.” While the memory of the riot remained palpable in the African American community for years to come, white civic leaders suppressed the story, which disappeared from official histories of the city.
Almost 100 years later, a group of historians, social justice activists, and religious and community leaders gathered to begin planning how to commemorate this mostly forgotten piece of Atlanta’s past. Calling themselves the Coalition to Remember the 1906 Atlanta Race Riot, the group orchestrated a series of programs, including exhibitions, a walking tour, and a vigil in remembrance of what historian Cliff Kuhn described as a “white riot.” Kuhn, an associate professor at Georgia State University, took the lead on the walking tour. The tour, which explored the causes and outcomes of the riot against the backdrop of the places where much of the violence happened, became the most enduring aspect of the commemorative program.