A multi-million-dollar project to preserve the homes where the first Black woman elected to the Georgia General Assembly once lived is officially moving ahead.
Metro Atlanta Nonprofit, Preserve Black Atlanta, is working with $2.3 million to preserve the 20th-century homes of Grace Towns Hamilton and her father, George Towns, near the Vine City neighborhood.
Officials say the funding is coming from a National Park Service grant and Atlanta’s Westside tax allocation district (TAD). Part of the TAD funding had to be approved by the Fulton County Commission Board in mid-June.
“The idea here is to repair these homes and have them be available to the public as historic landmarks. But also, help with the neighborhood, which that particular part of that street is in disrepair, which is not great for public safety,” said Fulton County Commissioner Dana Barrett during the meeting.
Towns Hamilton was the first Black woman elected to the Georgia House in 1965, serving for nearly 20 years. Historians say she was one of six Black people to be elected since the start of the Jim Crow era.
“She was beautiful, brilliant, charming, graceful, extremely politically astute, very quiet spoken, but got things done,” said Chairman Robb Pitts during the June meeting.
Historians say Towns Hamilton was also the first Black woman elected to a state office in the South and would study voting district maps to help find and create opportunities for Black people, helping boost the Black voter population in the late 1940s.
Her father was a student and prominent professor at Atlanta University, now Clark Atlanta University. He later helped co-found the 1905 Niagara Movement, which “laid the cornerstone of the modern civil rights era” and later “became the backbone of the newly formed National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.”
Karcheik Sims-Alvarado is the founder of Preserve Black Atlanta. She said the homes of these two figures were places of political thought for Black people in Atlanta.
“Buildings could tell stories in ways in which books cannot … and you begin to think about all the activity that occurred within these buildings, like how Black people organized and had secret meetings and strategized,” Sims-Alvarado said. “They had like these think tanks inside people’s living rooms and basements and they strategized and they partnered together, and with Grace and George, you actually saw like this, this daddy-daughter duo.”
Sim-Alavarado said Towns Hamilton would “court” Black individuals to run for various offices, like the first Black man elected to the U.S. Congress, Andrew Young.
As of now, officials say they’re getting permits to move forward in restoring the properties. They expect the project to be completed in about two years.
