Ominous clouds darkened what was previously a beautiful day in Atlanta’s Old Fourth Ward as I walked down Auburn Avenue to dine at Auburn Angel for the first time. It was early April, almost exactly one year since the restaurant had opened, and I figured it was finally time to visit.
When I rounded the corner, near the entrance, I noticed the famed grill pit used to smoke and grill ribs, chicken, and whatever else might’ve been served at Auburn Rib Shack, a personal favorite of Martin Luther King Jr.’s. Auburn Avenue Rib Shack was part of Soul Food Row, a collection of food businesses including Muckie’s Grill, Hawk’s Dinette, and Ma Sutton’s that fueled and comforted Black people in Atlanta. The whole of Sweet Auburn was a crown jewel of Black entrepreneurship that the rest of the country looked toward—a beacon of Black possibility in the South during a time filled with the opposite.
