For years, Donata Russell Ross attended parties in Buckhead at the homes of her white Westminster classmates.
So, when Ross, the daughter of influential Black businessman Herman J. Russell, graduated from Westminster in 1977, she was determined to have a party at her Collier Heights home.
“It was the first time that the majority of the class had ever been on the Black side of town,” she said. She remembers being told later by some surprised visitors that “your neighborhood looks like ours. We didn’t know Black people lived like that.”
Had her father not been part of the Atlanta business community, she suspects that many would not have been allowed to come at all.
“It was an eye-opener for me,” said Ross. “I felt like I knew what their lives were like, but they didn’t know what our lives were like.”
Her parents, Herman Russell and Otelia Hackney Russell, were among early homebuilders in the Collier Heights community, a growing enclave for Atlanta’s middle class. They moved there from the Summerhill community in the early 1960s.
Ross and her brothers, H. Jerome Russell and Michael Russell Sr., are all involved in the family business today.
The company later went on to help build the Atlanta headquarters of the Coca-Cola Company, Mercedes-Benz Stadium, and the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C.
“When you’re a child, you often don’t realize how special the world you’re growing up in is. It wasn’t, frankly, until I went to college that I realized our community was very different from what most African-American children experienced.”
Donata Russell Ross
Among the family’s Collier Heights neighbors were entrepreneurs, physicians, educators, civil rights leaders, attorneys, and politicians.
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. used to visit the Russell home with his children and swim in their indoor pool. Other visitors included former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley and Colin Powell, a respected military leader who would later become U.S. Secretary of State under President George W. Bush.
“When you’re a child, you often don’t realize how special the world you’re growing up in is,” she said. “It wasn’t, frankly, until I went to college that I realized our community was very different from what most African-American children experienced.”
When her parents moved out of Collier Heights, her brother, Michael Russell, moved in. Later, the home was sold to Michael L. Lomax, an educator, former elected official, and currently president and CEO of the United Negro College Fund.
Another brother, H. Jerome Russell, also remembers how close-knit the community was.
Jerome Russell spent his first two decades in Collier Heights. Even today, he treasures those relationships with others in the community, some of which continue to this day. They were especially important as many of his friends attended Frederick Douglass High School, and he attended the predominantly white Westminster across town.
He found community in Collier Heights. House parties. Neighborhood gatherings and front and back yard chats. His parents added a tennis court to their property. It was a socially and economically progressive community.
Both Donata Russell Ross and Jerome Russell hope people continue to appreciate the history of Collier Heights.
“I feel a deep connection to the community,” Ross says. “I hope it can be remembered and, frankly, revitalized to the level of prominence it had in the Black community back to the time when I was growing up. It’s a very special community.”
