The name Sweet Auburn was coined by John Wesley Dobbs, referring to the "richest Negro street in the world," one of the largest concentrations of African-American businesses in the United States.

A National Historic Landmark District was designated in 1976, covering 19 acres (7.7 ha) of the neighborhood, significant for its history and development as a segregated area under the state's Jim Crow laws.

"Sweet" Auburn Avenue became home to Alonzo Herndon's Atlanta Mutual, the city's first black-owned life insurance company, and to a celebrated concentration of black businesses, newspapers, churches, and nightclubs.

In 1956, Fortune magazine called Sweet Auburn "the richest Negro street in the world", a phrase originally coined by civil rights leader John Wesley Dobbs from the poem The Deserted Village by Oliver Goldsmith.

[2][7] However, like so many other inner-city neighborhoods, Sweet Auburn fell victim to lack of investment, heavy, widespread crime, homelessness, and abandonment, compounded by construction of the Downtown Connector freeway that split it in two.

The Historic District Development Corporation (HDDC) was formed to turn the trend around, starting with houses surrounding the birth home of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and working outward.

The Royal Peacock Club provided an elegant setting where many African Americans could perform and bring the changing styles of black popular music to Atlanta.

[10] The Sweet Auburn Heritage Festival searches for entertainment from cities such as Atlanta, Macon, Savannah, Augusta, Huntsville and Chattanooga in hopes to help non- established artist's path to stardom.

Ultimately, the Sweet Auburn Heritage Festival entertainment has grown much farther than originally anticipated from its beginning stages in 1984.