African American Heritage

Augusta’s African-American community has played a crucial role in shaping the city’s history and culture. Lucy Craft Laney was one of Georgia’s most influential educators, a woman who rose to educational prominence more than a decade before the end of the Civil War. The Lucy Craft Laney Museum of Black History is dedicated to her legacy.

Goodale Plantation was the first place in the state to employ free African Americans. The Amanda Dickson Toomer Home still stands as a testament to the strength and tenacity of the woman who became the wealthiest African American woman of the late 1800s. The daughter of a wealthy planter and a slave, she fought the courts for her inheritance and bought this home after the trial. Churches were often centers of religious, social and civic life for African Americans. Tabernacle Baptist Church, formerly Beulah Baptist, was the home church of the dynamic Reverend Charles T. Walker. Today, on James Brown Boulevard, visitors can see monuments to African American leaders in education, medicine, business and more. Be sure to stop for photos at the statue of James Brown, the “Godfather of Soul,” to whom Augusta’s musical heritage owes so much.