Hooper Street

Hooper Street Stories: 100 Years of African American Family Life

This marker is located on Hooper Avenue, off Oakdale Road on the west side, just south of Benning Place. It commemorates 100 years of African American family life on Hooper Street, 1882–1980s. The marker was installed in 2020. Its text follows:

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For more than 100 years, Hooper Street was a close-knit African American neighborhood in early Edgewood-Candler Park. From Charles Hooper’s 1882 land purchase until the 1980s, it was a vital Black family enclave. Many Antioch East Baptist Church members once lived on this street and raised their families here.

Mr. Charles Hooper was a member of the Antioch East Baptist Church in early Edgewood, before the area became known as Candler Park in the 1920s. He had bought the five-acre parcel in 1882 for $300 “cash in hand.” At the time, it was wild and uncultivated land. Over the years, Hooper gifted, sold, and willed land lots to his family, friends, and church members. A spring-fed creek at the low end of the street provided a vital source of water and self-reliance for Black residents during the challenging times of Jim Crow segregation. Hooper Street was the longest lasting African American enclave in Candler Park.

The 1940 census counted more than 120 Black residents living on Hooper Street. Many owned their homes and worked as cooks, servants, yardmen, and drivers. They included laborers, laundresses, and delivery men, as well as a teacher, janitor, porter, carpenter, brick mason, and hospital orderly. Character development and education for the children were priorities. Backyard gardens and animals, cookouts and street life added to the area’s vitality.

By the early 1980s, fewer families lived on the street and many houses were vacant. Some folks felt “edged out” by social pressures and changing job and real estate markets. At the end of the decade, most Black residents had passed on or sold their houses and moved away.

While redevelopment/gentrification has transformed much of the streetscape, in 2019 two 1900 structures remained, including the 1900-built one-story Hooper family home that still stands today at 1370 Hooper Ave.

Current and former Hooper Street residents and Candler Park neighbors worked together to commemorate the street’s African American legacy.