My father got a good job at the aircraft company Lockheed Martin, earning $1.60 per hour. And soon after, our family had a new baby coming. We would soon be joined by Sheila Darlene Cooper.
Our family was now five, and we needed a bigger and better place to live.
My parents longed for a place with a yard and trees, like the ones in which they grew up. But for Black families during the early 1950s, finding a house for sale in Atlanta was difficult. At the time, Atlanta had a successful Black community that included physicians, bankers, teachers, business owners, and churches.
Yet there were limited housing options. We couldn’t just go anywhere we wanted. Segregation laws and the potential for violence and bombings kept the lines drawn between Blacks and whites.
Four generations of the Cooper family
My mother was concerned about finding a safe place. She would be home alone most of the time, with three children.
Her fear grew in 1955. She was reading a copy of Jet magazine, and something she saw greatly upset her. When no one was looking, I picked it up to see what all the fuss was about. The photo scared me. To me, it appeared to be a woman looking at a monster lying in a bed.
Later, I found out the picture was a little Black teen from Chicago in a coffin. His name was Emmett Till. White men had kidnapped, brutally beaten, and shot him while he was visiting relatives in Mississippi. His alleged offense was whistling at a white woman. According to news reports and the FBI, a large metal fan was tied to his neck with barbed wire, and his body was thrown into the Tallahatchie River.
The crime sent chills through many Black parents worried about the safety of their children.
My parents, with the guidance of my grandfather, decided we were moving to a safe place.
My father felt that working at Lockheed, with its segregated bathrooms, lunchrooms, and with no possibility of advancement, seemed bleak. So, my grandfather decided to help my father start his own business, a gas station.
An ad about Cooper’s Gulf Gas Station
We were about to completely change our lifestyle.
Atlanta Black community leaders had developed a secret plan. The plan was called Project X.
It followed the classic storylines of early settlers in America. We would become pioneers and move out West, staking claim to a new frontier. There was undeveloped land west of downtown Atlanta. My grandfather said, there we could build a new community for ourselves. A totally Black community, built and developed by Black folks, both well off and working class.
The whole area was the country with a few small houses, undeveloped and isolated. Most streets were dead ends and stopped where the woods started. We didn’t have streetlights or air conditioning. There was a septic tank and a huge floor furnace for heat. But there were front and back yards.
A very basic house, but it was our home.
And it was my father’s life lesson from his monied father: make it work.
Over time, new homes and subdivisions were added. The Collier Heights family was quickly growing.
As children, our parents shielded us, as best they could, from the outside world.
The civil rights movement, the Birmingham Campaign, Medgar Evers’ assassination, the March on Washington, and the Baptist Street Church Bombing in Birmingham shocked our parents and the rest of the nation.
Still, we felt safe in our community.
At home, we would hear the soothing sounds of Nat King Cole, Ray Charles, or Bill Evans softly echoing on our two-speaker stereo system. We would smell Mom’s smothered steak, rutabagas, and green beans, with cornbread.
It settled me. Nourished me.
The Cooper children in their Collier Heights neighborhood
Riding my bike, I met a new kid in Kings Grant subdivision, just a few streets over from our home on Albert Street. I knew him as “Junior,” and we became explorer friends. His father was a prominent minister, civil rights leader, and theologian, the Rev. Wyatt Tee Walker. To me, though, he was just my friend’s dad.
Walker was on the board of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and an organizer of the Birmingham Campaign and the March on Washington, where the “I Have a Dream” speech was delivered.
Walker and many other civil rights leaders were customers at Cooper’s Gulf Gas Station.
Our family left Collier Heights around 1966 and moved to Peyton Forrest.
“Even today, it makes me wonder, what would the world be like if we were allowed to build it and fully participate?”
Collier Heights, though, left an indelible mark on my soul.
Even today, it makes me wonder, what would the world be like if we were allowed to build it and fully participate?
Since those days, sometimes, I just drive through to catch the vibe. It’s still magical and so special. A 1950s shining example of equitable living and Black community building.
It’s the people, not the houses, we must remember. The residents created, shared, and lived a magical vision of America, built on a solid foundation of love of self, education, discipline, church, and lessons from our ancestors.
Our Camelot.
Like iced tea with lemon on a hot day: cool and sweet.
