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Community Corner

Honoring John Wesley Dobbs

From an impoverished childhood, Dobbs went on to solidify African-American political influence.

The past 100 years have seen Atlanta undergo a remarkable transformation. Not only has Atlanta’s commercial emergence been staggering, but its social transformation has been remarkable. From what was once a capital of the segregated South, Atlanta has become a largely African-American city with a largely African-American leadership and has achieved a level of racial coexistence that, while far from perfect, outshines that of most major U.S. cities.

Many people and institutions have had a hand in this transformation, but none so much as the Dobbs family, which traces its ancestral roots to 19th century Marietta and Kennesaw.

John Wesley Dobbs (1882 – 1961) was called the “Unofficial Mayor of Auburn Avenue.” Indeed, his life work and public advocacy paved the way for future civic and civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr., Andrew Young and Dobbs’s own grandson, Maynard Jackson.

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This year marks the 50th anniversary both of Dobbs’s death and of the desegregation of Atlanta City Schools.

Taken from an interview given in 1932, John Wesley Dobbs’s own words add remarkable insights into the man himself, woven here into a short narrative of his life.

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“I was born March 26, 1882, three and a half miles north of Marietta, at the side of Kennesaw Mountain,” Dobbs said. “I was named for my grandfather, who had 14 children.”

When Dobbs was 2 years old, his parents separated. Dobbs and his older sister were left with their grandparents, who had a farm near Kennesaw. Their mother, Minnie Dobbs, found work in Savannah.

“My mother never forgot us,” Dobbs recalled. “She used to come once or twice a year and bring us clothes.”

With two more children added to an already struggling family with 14 children, Dobb’s childhood in post-Reconstruction Marietta was one of poverty and sacrifice.

“Of what I can remember of life for those first seven years is that we went to a country school, walked several miles to this school, and I was in the first reader. One teacher taught all of the pupils from what we considered the first reader to the fifth reader, and that was about as high as they went.”

In this simple classroom, Dobbs began a lifelong love of learning, taking a keen interest in birds and animals and in the history of Kennesaw Mountain. He was finally able to attend a public school in 1891, when his mother brought him and his sister to live with her in Savannah. Dobbs was placed in the second grade.

His mother also instilled in him strong character values.

"One of my early impressions of things that linger was that my mother dressed me very nicely, put clean clothes on me, and took me to Sunday school and church,” he said.  “I still remember the impressions that were made upon me by the church influence.”

Dobbs began working when he was about 12 years old, when his mother told him he could no longer go to school because she could not afford to buy him shoes or clothes.

“There was a white lady who had a job for me. I was in the fifth grade then. I was willing to work but I couldn't help but break down and cry when she told me she would hire me, as I wanted to go back to school.”

This unidentified “white lady” was moved with compassion and decided to give Dobbs a job that would allow him to remain in school while earning the money to pay for his own shoes and clothing. Dobbs worked summers shining shoes in a barber shop and worked two paper routes during the school year.

“I was able to buy my own shoes and clothes, which I did the rest of my life,” he said.  “Nobody bought me anything from that time on.”

This work ethic followed Dobbs for the rest of this life.

"I always kept a job. I was never idle, nor have I been since that time. I remember a man coming in to tell me about his not having a job, and said he couldn't find one. I couldn't understand it then, nor can I understand it now, that men go around saying they cannot find work. It is just something I cannot understand, because ever since I first worked as delivery boy for the newspapers in Savannah, I have had more jobs than I could do. If it wasn't one thing it was another; if it wasn't the kind of work I liked and was all I could get, I did that until I could do better.”

In 1897, Dobbs moved to Atlanta to join his mother, who had found work there. It was here that the Rev. E.J. Fisher, pastor of Mt. Olive Baptist Church, took an interest in the young man. Taking him to Atlanta Baptist College, which would later become Morehouse, Fisher paid the tuition for his first year of “academy,” or high school. By his second year, Dobbs had earned a scholarship.

Although he finished four years at the academy and intended to enroll as a college freshman, his mother’s health failed, and he was forced to drop out of school to care for her. Having passed the Civil Service Exam, he began working for the U.S. Postal Service, working there for 32 years.

In 1906, Dobbs married Irene Ophelia Thompson. The couple had six daughters, all of whom would go on to graduate from Spellman College. Mattiwilda Dobbs became a well-known opera singer, and Irene Dobbs, who married Maynard H. Jackson, Sr., taught French at Spellman.

It was during this time, as well as after his retirement, that Dobbs began his career in civic leadership. Believing that black political involvement, particularly through voting, was the key to advancing the standing of African-Americans, Dobbs cofounded the Negro Voters League in 1946.

As the leader of what quickly became the state’s most influential black political organization, Dobbs was able to leverage guarantees from the white politicians he helped to put in office. In 1948, Mayor William B. Hartsfield, fulfilling a promise to Dobbs, hired the city’s first eight African-American police officers. In 1949, Hartsfield fulfilled another promise by having streetlights installed along Auburn Avenue.

As small as these gestures may have seemed, they were tremendous victories for African Americans in the political arena, beginning the desegregation of the police force and positioning the African-American vote as a force to be reckoned with. The effect was felt throughout the country, and Dobbs became a much-sought-after speaker and advisor on civil rights, politics and ethics within the community.

On Aug. 30, 1961, John Wesley Dobbs died from a stroke suffered days earlier. That very same day, Atlanta City Schools desegregated.

A decade later, in 1973, Dobbs’s grandson, Maynard H. Jackson, Jr., became Atlanta’s first black mayor. In 1994, Mayor Jackson changed the name of Houston Street to John Wesley Dobbs Ave.

Reflecting on his life in 1935, Dobbs had this to say: “One sees what one permits his eyes to see. If he looks down, it's the mud, and if he looks up, it's the stars. I have always tried to look up.”

For more on John Wesley Dobbs and his impact on Atlanta, read Where Peachtree meets Sweet Auburn: the saga of two families and the making of Atlanta, by Gary Pomerantz.

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