ATLANTA — A historic elementary school in Atlanta that was bombed during the Civil Rights Movement is getting a second chance to be the epicenter of the English Avenue community in the Westside.
English Avenue Elementary has been closed since 1995. Since then, it has stood vacant and boarded up, with a 50,000 square feet of space in the heart of the residential neighborhood.
In 1960, in the middle of the Civil Rights Movement, the school was bombed. At a time when integrating schools became a vision, segregationists resisted the change nationwide.
No one was hurt in the bombing, but the school has sat vacant for 26 years leaving a huge void.
Longtime Atlanta resident and politician Mable Thomas, better known as ‘Able Mable,’ purchased the property in 2010 through her nonprofit Greater Vine City Opportunities Program, as a way to invest back into her own Westside community.
“This building was not a building where someone came in from the outside to rescue us. This is the poor people working together and working class people working together and having a voice in their own community,” she said.
Thomas says the Atlanta-based developer Westside Development Partners LLC entered into a partnership to redevelop the property into a community center.
According to our partners at the Atlanta Business Chronicle, the city council recently approved for the developer to turn the space into a job training center, which is set to open in 2023.
Thomas says the vision should also include space for the arts and culture.
“As this process moves on, [I hope] that the community’s voice will be heard more clearly and concisely,” Thomas said.
The community hopes the developer will take all of that into consideration by being transparent and intentional, so the legacy of the beloved school is also memorialized.