Events and Programs

DHC hosts a wide variety of educational and fun events throughout the year. Please join our e-mail list to get timely updates.

FIFTH ANNUAL BLACK HISTORY MONTH CELEBRATION

"A Salute to Community Champions"

Thursday, February 9, from 11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.

Historic DeKalb County Courthouse, 101 E. Court Square, Decatur GA 30030, Second Floor, Superior Courtroom

Honoring these DeKalb citizens with achievements both past and ongoing:
Sheriff-Elect Derwin Brown, Dr. William C. Brown, John Evans, William "Buck" Godfrey, Gregory B. Levett, Sr.

In conjunction with The Champion Newspaper and our temporary exhibit, we are please to honor DeKalb champions from the past 20 years who have cared enough about our community to get involved, stay involved and make a difference. The event includes: a dynamic dance performance by Capoeira Maculele Decatur; a seated luncheon by Soiree and publisher Carolyn Glenn as the Mistress of Ceremonies

Tickets are required and seating is limited. The cost is $30 for members and $35 for non-members and sponsorships are still available. Contact Melissa at director@dekalbhistory.org or 404-373-1088, extension 22 for ticket information or sponsorship levels.

Sponsors: DeKalb Convention and Visitors Bureau, DeKalb Medical Hillandale, Georgia Power

Guardians: A. S. Turner & Sones, Inc., Bank of North Georgia, City of Decatur, Cornerstone Bank, Downtown Decatur Development Authority, Gregory B. Levett and Sons Funeral Home, Char & Stuart Zola

OLD HOUSE FAIR

Saturday, February 18, 9:00 a.m. - 5: p.m. At the Courtyard by Marriott Atlanta Decatur

The DeKalb History Center is a presenter. Click here for additional information.

MARCH LUNCH AND LEARN, With Mera Cardenas

Arabia Mountain National Heritage Area

Tuesday, March 20

In Southeast DeKalb… there is a landscape of peace, beauty and wonder dominated by a granite sentry that has stood for more than 400 million years. How did this loose network of once rural communities, often overlooked in standard histories, come to be a major part of a 40,000 acre National Heritage Area? Mera Cardenas, Executive Director of the Arabia Mountain Heritage Area Alliance, explains how this National Park Service program is helping to protect and connect the area’s natural, historic and cultural resources. From early settlers, to granite quarries to a community forged by emancipated slaves – the Heritage Area is rich with stories, history and breathtaking beauty. A model of private-public coordination, the Heritage Area was awarded the Atlanta Regional Commission’s inaugural Great Places Award in 2011. Come see how history and nature formed this unique landscape and how The Alliance is working to protect these places for future generations.

Mera Cardenas is the Executive Director of Arabia Mountain Heritage Area Alliance. She joined the organization as its first ED in September 2010 after an extensive career at CNN as a writer, field producer and most recently as a Senior Director for Sales and Affiliate Relations in the Newsource division. Extensive volunteer work at Atlanta’s Historic Oakland Cemetery and personal interests led Ms. Cardenas to complete a Master’s in Heritage Preservation at Georgia State University. She seeks to combine production techniques developed over her journalism career with interesting, local stories to create vibrant living histories that help us understand our world today through the past.

Noon to 1:00 p.m.

Historic Courthouse, Second Floor, Superior Courtroom
Free - bring your lunch!

ANNUAL MEETING AND SILENT AUCTION

Friday March 23, 6:00 - 9:00 p.m.

Historic DeKalb County Courthouse, 101 E. Court Square, Decatur GA 30030, Second Floor, Superior Courtroom.

MAY LUNCH AND LEARN, With Dr. David Rotenstein

Reviving South Decatur: Urban Homesteading and its Effects

Tuesday, May 22

In 1975 Decatur became one of 23 American cities to have neighborhoods included in a new federal program devoted to returning foreclosed and abandoned homes to private homeownership. South Decatur in the 1960s had undergone a rapid transition from an all-white neighborhood to a majority African American neighborhood. Many of the new African American homeowners were unprepared for homeownership and their properties slipped into foreclosure. By the mid-1970s, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development was South Decatur’s largest residential property owner and property manager. The titles to more than 100 vacant homes in HUD’s portfolio were transferred to Decatur’s Housing Authority and 113 of those homes were sold to new owners for one dollar. The Urban Homesteading program was designed to attract new homeowners who would receive low-interest loans to rehabilitate their new houses to bring them up to code and spur investment in surrounding properties.

Urban Homesteading was authorized under the same legislation that created Community Development Block Grants. Together, these two acts enabled the rehabilitation of residential properties throughout South Decatur, improvements to McKoy and Oakhurst parks, and the area’s first streetscape improvement project in the newly rebranded Oakhurst business district. By the turn of the twenty-first century, Oakhurst was a bustling and trendy Decatur neighborhood. This presentation looks at South Decatur’s history and the impacts that the Urban Homesteading program had on the neighborhood and the greater city.

David Rotenstein graduated from Georgia State University and worked as an archaeologist with the Georgia Department of Transportation before attending graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania. He has a Ph.D. in Folklore and Folklife and he has worked in public history and historic preservation for more than 25 years. Dr. Rotenstein has taught history and cultural anthropology and he has written on blues history, industrial history, and vernacular architecture.