John Soward Bayne

Atlanta's South-View Cemetery John Soward Bayne

This is a guidebook to South-View Cemetery in Atlanta, Georgia. The cemetery was chartered 21 April 1886 by African-American businessmen, all former slaves, faced with exhaustion of Oakland Cemetery (1850) and desirous of a respectful burial ground. The Watts family has managed the cemetery from its earliest days; the current president is the great-granddaughter of the patriarch, Albert Watts. Notable burials include the parents and grandparents of Martin Luther King, Jr.; John Wesley Dobbs, the ""Mayor of Sweet Auburn""; and Alonzo Franklin Herndon, who was born a slave, worked as a sharecropper, established a chain of opulent and successful barbershops, then became Atlanta's first black millionaire through the Atlanta Life Insurance Company. Through the lives and accomplishments in death-year order of over 100 people buried at South-View, this book tells the history of African-American Atlanta. Introductory essays are by Traci Rylands and Herman ""Skip"" Mason, Jr.