Macon Magazine

52 maconmagazine.com | October/November 2024 STORY BY CLARENCE W. THOMAS, JR. | PHOTOS BY DSTO MOORE If there's anything that reminds locals of the resilience and resonance of the historic Pleasant Hill neighborhood, it would be its annual Family Reunion. H o w P l e a s a n t H i l l s t ays c o n n e c te d a c r o s s g e n e ra t i o n s C O O K O U T S & C L A S S M A T E S E ach year, Mattie Hubbard Jones Park becomes a gathering place of previous and current residents reminiscing about coming of age in Pleasant Hill – recalling notable names, claims to fame, and reliving what made Pleasant Hill "a village in a city," as it was described in its application for the National Register of Historic Places and in Macon Magazine by Maryel Battin. That close-knit feeling was created partly by the district's charming walkability – schools, a hospital, pharmacy, grocery stores, and more Black-owned businesses within the roughly one-mile pentagon of land just north of Downtown Macon. But more important was its "it takes a village" mindset toward supporting youth and families. In 1986, it became the second nationally recognized Black historic district in Georgia (the other being the home of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Atlanta). A retired Southwest High School teacher, Albert Howard, whose forebears were among the neighborhood's earliest 19th- century residents, told The Telegraph in 1984: "There was a kind of cohesion. Everybody was concerned about one another. Everybody was a guardian to every child in the neighborhood." B u i l d i n g a l e g a cy Pleasant Hill's history stretches back to its o cial establishment in 1879, when the neighborhood began building what would become its calling card – an enclave of Black economic, political, educational, and cultural might. Inhabiting the neighborhood were doctors, teachers, preachers, skilled tradesmen, mail carriers, and other professionals who provided stability for the community. The district also became the birthplace of giants in various vocations. Reconstruction-era Rep. Je erson Long, Georgia's rst Black congressman, had neighborhood ties. Little Richard was reared there. So was famed Harlem Renaissance writer John Oliver Killens. Landmarks like the St. Peter Claver Catholic School, established in 1903, and historic Linwood Cemetery serve as tangible reminders of Pleasant Hill's storied past. Douglass Theatre founder Charles H. Douglass, Je erson Long, and Marine Sgt. Rodney Davis – Macon's only Congressional Medal of Honor recipient – are interred in Linwood. C h a l l e n g e s a n d c h a n g e In family reunion conversations, listeners are transported back in time by those who remember Pleasant Hill making its mark, even in the face of segregation, as the location of the Black-sta ed Lundy Hospital and Amelia Hutchings Library. However, challenges in the modern era caused Pleasant Hill to become unrecognizable – most notably the construction of I-75, which split the neighborhood in half. The highway's destruction, along with the e ects of integration, contributed to the decline of Black businesses in the neighborhood. This was followed by an in ux of social ills like drug

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