Amos Drug Store / Ashby Heights - Fulton Co., GA
Posted by: Lat34North
N 33° 45.267 W 084° 25.060
16S E 739188 N 3737926
This is a two sided marker. It is located on Joseph E. Lowery Blvd. just south of Martin Luther King Jr. DR., West End, GA.
Waymark Code: WM7W4A
Location: Georgia, United States
Date Posted: 12/11/2009
Views: 1
Amos Drug Store – 3 Ashby Street
Born in 1866 in rural Georgia, Moses Amos walked to Atlanta in search of employment. He became a druggist’s assistant and, in 1913, opened his own pharmacy. Ten years later, he and his nephew, Miles Amos, opened their own west side branch here, where it became a social club for neighborhood youth. Like other members of the Black business community, the Amos family campaign for political equality. In 1953, Miles Amos and A. T. Walden, a prominent attorney, became the first African American since 1870 to hold elected office in the city's Democratic Party.
Ashby Heights – 3 Ashby Street
The Ashby Heights community was envisioned by entrepreneur Heman Perry, whose financial empire included Standard Life Insurance, one of the nation's first Black-owned legal reserve life insurance companies, and Citizen’s Trust Bank, Atlanta second Black-owned bank. Perry began acquiring property in the area before World War I. Following the great fire of 1917, he built and sold houses to displaced African Americans. Perry's acquisitions included land later purchased by the Atlanta Board of Education for Booker T. Washington High School. By 1919, Perry's dream of a proud, middle-class Black community had become a reality that stretched from Washington Place to Fair Street.
The Atlanta Independent, an African American newspaper, held a contest to name the new development: Ashby Heights.