Atlanta's South-View Cemetery

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.