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I learned about money—and about the ways it slipped through the cracks of official systems—at my grandmother’s bedside. My Mudea started each morning with a routine: coffee steaming, Bible open, Squawk Box murmuring in the background. Scattered across the table were scraps of dream books and stubby lottery pencils. Numbers scribbled on slips waited for me to carry them as the writer and the runner.
I was reminded by its beauty when listening to Richard Dunn, the grandson of Atlanta Voice News founder J. Lowell Ware.
“It was a nurturing space,” Dunn says. “You know, it was a walkable neighborhood, and we could explore. We could ride bikes. We could go play in the woods, go play in the cemetery … Before things got crazy, and you always need parental supervision to move around. Collier Heights was safe like that, and everybody knew each other.”
Collier Heights didn’t arrive by accident. In 1952, when the city annexed this stretch of land on the west side, a small group of determined people began to plot its future. They called themselves the West Side Mutual Development Committee, and though the name sounded official, what they were really doing was hacking the system.
They knew the rules of the city were stacked against them.
In the early 1900s, the rules and the system included items like The Ashley Ordinance of 1913. Named for Fourth Ward City Councilman Claude L. Ashley, this racial zoning ordinance was designed to legally restrict where Black people could live in Atlanta, effectively creating segregated districts. This ordinance still stands in the city today with amendments.
Dunn explains, “You know, we back in the day, we would call it the code. You know those codes. It was ethics to even how they manage their business. It was—you learn supply and demand. You learn distribution. You learn math. You know what I mean: fractions, ounces, what weight really look like. You know me. So you learn organizational skills. Learn leadership skills, yeah, you learn checks and balances. You learn order instruction, strictly from hanging around guys who were in the game. And the difference is, I think they were aware of your opportunities and what you had available to you. And so, you know, a lot of times they would push kids out of the game.”
Realtors could turn hostile, zoning boards could slam doors, banks could simply say no. So the early planners of Collier Heights created a workaround. The National Development Company, a Black-led land bank, began buying property quietly, shielding buyers from the refusals that came the moment a Black family’s name was on the contract.
RELATED: Collier Heights is not for sale
By the late 1950s, members of the Empire Real Estate Board—including men like John Calhoun and Quentin V. Williamson—were cutting streets into the hillside, laying foundations, and selling lots. Their work had backing: Citizens Trust Bank, Atlanta Mutual Savings & Loan, and Atlanta Life Insurance Company set aside money for mortgages that white banks wouldn’t touch.
What rose here was more than a subdivision. It was a deliberate act of defiance, a neighborhood carved out of a segregated market. Collier Heights was proof that when Black Atlantans pooled their ingenuity and resources, they could build wealth on their own terms.
James Martin remembers it through his uncle, the legendary Chicken Man, who spun winnings into houses all over the city. “With the money he made from numbers, he purchased real estate and owned houses throughout the city. If you weren’t educated…it was other routes for you to get money in order to get yourself standing legally by getting businesses started.”
And then there was The Blue Flame, its neon glow marking the edge of the neighborhood. I was seven when I first walked inside. My Papa settled me on a barstool, ordered me a Shirley Temple, and leaned in close with his friends. I knew where I was, knew this was no place for a child, but I also knew the club pulsed with the same energy as The Bug—money moving, stories traded, survival strategies unfolding in plain sight.
The Bug didn’t fund Collier Heights, not in bricks or mortgages. But it coexisted with those systems. It filled in gaps, kept cash circulating, and mirrored the same determination that built the houses on Collier Drive and Baker Ridge.
If The Bug was one kind of safety net, churches and societies were another. Collier Heights families leaned on benevolent societies, on lodges, on the quiet power of pooled risk. When illness struck, when tuition came due, when a business needed seed money, these institutions stepped in.
By the 1970s, the institutions that had nurtured Collier Heights were becoming powerhouses in their own right. Atlanta Life Insurance Company stood at the center, guided by Jesse Hill Jr.
Hill started at Atlanta Life in 1949, one of the first Black actuaries in the country. By 1973, he was its president. Under his watch, the company expanded its mortgage programs, stretching beyond Atlanta into Georgia, Alabama, Florida, and Texas, opening doors that white-controlled banks still kept shut.
But Hill knew mortgages were only part of the story. Atlanta Life under his leadership posted bail for protestors, funded voter registration drives that added tens of thousands of Black Atlantans to the rolls, and in 1980, raised a new headquarters on Auburn Avenue in partnership with Herman J. Russell. The building wasn’t just an office; it was a declaration, a monument to Black capital planted in the heart of the city.
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