Five Points and Underground Atlanta sit on ground connected to some of the darkest and most transformative chapters of Black Atlanta history, from the buying and selling of enslaved Black people to Reconstruction, segregation, Civil Rights protest and, eventually, Black music and nightlife. You might come to Underground Atlanta tonight to party. That's what makes this history hit differently.

Before the clubs, concerts, bars and events, this part of Downtown Atlanta was connected to the buying and selling of Black human beings. Atlanta had roughly 20 slave markets before the Civil War. One photographed slave market stood nearby on Whitehall Street, its storefront openly marked “Auction & Negro Sales.” Historical accounts also place slave-auction activity around Five Points and the Forsyth and Alabama Street area, with enslaved people held before being sold.

People were bought and sold around these blocks. Families could be separated here. Someone could arrive in Atlanta as somebody's son, mother, husband or sister and leave an auction legally owned by another person. And Atlanta profited from it. Atlanta History Center documents that the city itself levied a tax on the sale of enslaved men, women and children. Now look around. Five Points MARTA is here. Underground Atlanta is here. People catch trains. Artists create. People go to work. We meet friends. We go to concerts. We club here.

Black people walk these same Downtown blocks today as an ordinary part of being in Atlanta. That's what makes this stop powerful for BlkTravel. We aren't bringing you here because Underground is a preserved slavery museum. It isn't. We're bringing you here because the modern city has been built directly into layers of a past most people walking through Downtown never think about. And those layers kept coming.

After slavery ended, formerly enslaved people desperately searched for family members who had been separated through sale. Atlanta History Center documents that these searches could continue for decades, with Black newspapers eventually publishing “lost friend” notices trying to reconnect families slavery had torn apart. Then came Jim Crow. Black Atlantans could work Downtown. Shop Downtown. Spend money Downtown. But they couldn't necessarily eat, sit or move through Downtown on equal terms with white Atlantans.

So another generation challenged that. In 1960, students from Atlanta's Black colleges launched sit-ins against segregated Downtown businesses. On October 19, demonstrations targeted places including Rich's department store, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. joined the students. Think about the progression. Enslaved Black people were sold around Downtown Atlanta. Their descendants became free. Atlanta segregated them. Their descendants challenged the segregation. And generations later, we're back Downtown living. That's why we don't want you to treat Five Points and Underground Atlanta like ruins.

Go to Underground. Catch the train. See the art. Go to an event. Go club. Enjoy the fact that something our ancestors could not have imagined is completely ordinary to us. But at some point during the night, stop for a second. Look around. And know where you're standing.