Darktown was an

African-American neighborhood African-American neighborhoods or black neighborhoods are types of ethnic enclaves found in many cities in the United States. Generally, an African American neighborhood is one where the majority of the people who live there are African American ...

Atlanta, Georgia Atlanta ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Georgia (U.S. state), most populous city in the U.S. state of Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia. It is the county seat, seat of Fulton County, Georg ...

. It stretched from

Peachtree Street Peachtree Street is one of several major streets running through the city of Atlanta, Georgia, United States. Beginning at Five Points (Atlanta), Five Points in downtown Atlanta, it runs North through Midtown Atlanta, Midtown; a few blocks afte ...

and Collins Street (now Courtland Street), past Butler Ave. (now Jesse Hill Jr. Ave.) to Jackson Street. It referred to the blocks above Auburn Avenue in what is now

Downtown Atlanta Downtown Atlanta is the central business district of Atlanta, Georgia, United States. The largest of the city's three commercial districts (Midtown Atlanta, Midtown and Buckhead being the others), it is the location of many corporate and region ...

and the

Sweet Auburn The Sweet Auburn Historic District is a historic African-American neighborhood along and surrounding Auburn Avenue, east of downtown Atlanta, Georgia, United States. The name Sweet Auburn was coined by John Wesley Dobbs, referring to the "rich ...

neighborhood. Darktown was characterized in the 1930s as a "hell-hole of squalor, degradation, sickness, crime and misery". It is the setting for Thomas Mullen's 2016 novel '' Darktown''. The term "darktown" was also used generically in Atlanta and the rest of the South to refer to African-American districts. Currier and Ives produced a series of popular racist-caricature lithographs under the title Darktown Comics, ostensibly set in a Black town. It is used as such in the title of the famous song " Darktown Strutters' Ball" and 1899 Charles Hale song ''At a Darktown Cakewalk''. The separate city: Black communities in the Urban South, 1940-1968, p.130, Christopher Silver, John V. Moeser
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References

{{Coord, 33.760592, -84.381572, display=title Former shantytowns and slums in Atlanta African-American history in Atlanta Old Fourth Ward