Photograph by Ben Rollins
At the corner of Jesse Hill Jr. Drive and Auburn Avenue is a severely dilapidated three-story brick building that for most people is just another eyesore. The nondescript building is the original home of Atlanta State Savings Bank, the first officially chartered, Black-owned bank in the state of Georgia.
The building is historic, but its decrepit condition is glaringly obvious in the face of a changing downtown. Directly across the street stands a vibrant, 70-foot mural of civil rights icon and former congressman John Lewis. On the east side of the brick building is a faded, weathered image of two young Black children in the midst of play. But this is no innocuous mural celebrating the pastimes of youth: The children, dressed only in what looks to be tutus, are in fact the Gold Dust Twins, who for the first half of the 20th century served as racist branding for Fairbank’s Gold Dust Washing Powder.
The ad, splashed on a Black-owned bank in the heart of the storied Black neighborhood of Sweet Auburn, reflects a time in which Black Atlantans were still considered second-class citizens within their city—even on Auburn Avenue, a street synonymous with Black wealth, prosperity, and achievement.
“On a street lined with African American achievement and impact, the uncovering of the Gold Dust Twins put into perspective how far we’ve come, but also how far we have to go,” says Victoria Lemos, a local historian and host of the Archive Atlanta podcast. Lemos often includes the Gold Dust Twins advertisement in tours she leads with local historic preservationist Ann Hill Bond. Their tours have helped to spark renewed interest in this piece of local history.
Photograph by Ben Rollins
The Gold Dust Twins were once one of America’s most famous corporate mascots: “Almost the level of us knowing who Mickey Mouse is,” Lemos says in a video from a recent tour. The twins emerged in the post-Reconstruction era of the late 1800s and early 1900s, a time when racist, stereotypical corporate characters flooded advertising, from Aunt Jemima to Rastus, the longtime face of Cream of Wheat.
According to the historian Velma Maia Thomas, who wrote an article about the troubled advertisement for Atlanta Studies, N.K. Fairbanks & Co. originally marketed its Gold Dust powder with images of young White women washing clothes. But by 1903, it had rolled out a new pair of mascots: two young, genderless children, naked but for pink tutus, gleefully doing housework. Like most racialized mascots, the images were meant to elicit warm feelings from White consumers—consumers who, in many cases, bought such products for use in their homes by Black laborers.
“Let the Twins Do Your Work,” the washing powder’s slogan, was in its time as common as any catchphrase. N.K. Fairbanks & Co. was an early adopter of media strategy, creating “Goldie and Dustie,” a pair of White adult actors in blackface who did a minstrel-like impersonation of the caricature mascots, a popular precursor to minstrel shows such as Amos n’ Andy. Goldie and Dustie even had their own radio show, sponsored by Gold Dust washing powder, which used the product jingle as its theme song. Gold Dust’s ubiquitous advertising kept sales high until the 1950s, when the nascent civil rights movement began condemning the use of racist caricatures in product marketing, leading to their
gradual abandonment.
So how did this particular image end up on a building owned by Atlanta’s first Black millionaire, Alonzo Herndon? And why was it hidden for all these years? Herndon, who founded Atlanta Life Insurance Company, built a branch office directly next door in 1925, covering the Gold Dust Twins advertisement. It wasn’t until 2008, when a tornado destroyed that office building, that demolition revealed the faded remnants of the painting.
For those who understood the significance of the image, the historic irony of its location was immediately evident. “The uncovering of the Gold Dust Twins tells a story that reawakens the land memory of Auburn Avenue,” says Hill Bond. “The layered, living history preserved in every corner.”
Photograph by Ben Rollins
The discovery of the Gold Dust Twins ad dovetailed with the revival of the Auburn Avenue corridor. For the first time in decades, redevelopment and new projects adorn Sweet Auburn, the storied neighborhood where Martin Luther King Jr. was born, John Wesley Dobbs served as unofficial mayor, and Herndon poured his soul and treasure into development. After decades of disinvestment following the destruction of the community to create interstate I-75/85, the neighborhood that Fortune magazine described in 1956 as “the richest Negro street in America” is finally seeing a new day.
As Auburn Avenue booms, what is to become of the troubled old advertisement and the derelict building on which it is painted? Various organizations have a stake in the fate of 229 Auburn Avenue, among them Butler Street Community Development Corporation, its development partner Gorman & Company, the Atlanta Preservation Center, and the National Park Service. Gorman & Company originally planned to demolish the entire building to make way for a large mixed-use development, but after pushback from community members and preservationists, it unveiled a new plan that preserves the
historic structure.
Joel Reed, Gorman & Company’s Southeast market president, says the Gold Dust Twins ad will be preserved along with the building, adding that the company will work with preservationists and the Savannah College of Art and Design to provide educational context around the advertisement and its history. Lemos and Hill Bond believe such an acknowledgment is important.
“As someone who uses places to understand history, I think having [the Gold Dust Twins] in the shadow of the John Lewis mural, the Odd Fellows Building, and Big Bethel AME [Church] is a unique opportunity to teach about media and representation,” says Lemos. “As the general public continues to wake up to history around them, the redevelopment of Auburn Avenue has the opportunity to make those stories all the more visible.”
Whether or not the Gold Dust Twins advertisement is preserved, Hill Bond believes there will always be a need for people to share the history of this storied street. “[We] must continue to serve as a source of storytelling as we redevelop,” she says. “In doing so, we honor the multiple legacies of Auburn Avenue.”
This article appears in our February 2025 issue.
Advertisement
