A Tale Of Two Men: Revisiting The Legacy Of Charles Davidson, Sr.

Known by many as “Mr. Charlie,” Davidson, Sr. owned the Arabia Mountain quarry and was one of the most powerful businessmen in Georgia. He also had Klan sympathies and was feared by some Black citizens.

Ever wonder about the source of “Davidson” from the Davidson-Arabia Mountain Nature Preserve? Well, turns out, there’s a complicated history there.

There is an adage that says, “Racism is so American that when you protest racism, people think that you’re protesting America.” Unfortunately, for many Southern Americans, this reality has knocked at their front doorsteps more times than they’d like to admit, and here in the City of Lithonia at the heart of the Heritage Area is no different. From oral histories of lynchings to the Ku Klux Klan burning a church and school in Flat Rock that led to the development of a new school on Bruce Street, it goes without saying that Jim Crow had its claws dug deeply into Lithonia, once a granite quarrying hub that gave rise to its nickname, the City of Stone, or the City that Granite Built. As the Arabia Alliance, we have been dedicated to telling fuller stories that highlight the good, the bad, and the ugly of communities that make up the Arabia Mountain National Heritage Area.  

One Side Of The Tracks: Growing Up White In Lithonia

I’m the resident historian and assistant executive director at the Arabia Alliance, which stewards Atlanta’s only National Heritage Area. Recently, our communications manager Jeff Dingler and I began writing an Arabia Mountain National Heritage Area edition of Arcadia Publishing’s Images of America book series. We dug through hundreds of years of information relating to all that encompasses the National Heritage Area such as the Muscogee Nation that inhabited the lands that are now the National Heritage Area, the historically Black Flat Rock community, the beautiful Monastery of the Holy Spirit, the encouraging legacy of the Lithonia Colored School and the Bruce Street “Equalization” school, as well as the broad history of the city of Lithonia. While not all, many of these stories are tainted by the stains of bigotry that were all too prevalent in the Jim Crow South. Several of these stories inspire and encourage, but there are some that tug at your heartstrings and make you question the validity of the promises of America. Oftentimes, those two opposing realities are blended. 

We know that for many Southern cities and towns, the stories we tell are those of men and women who did not believe that all people were created equal. And while their actions may have been acceptable in another period, today, thankfully, acceptability does not equal morality. In the case of Lithonia, train tracks were used to cut the town in two between the mostly White downtown district around Main Street, and the mostly Black communities on the other side of the tracks concentrated around Bruce Street.

Lithonia can trace most of its acclaim to its history of granite and quarrying; in fact, the word Lithonia derives from the Greek lithos for “stone,” meaning “city of stone.” Throughout the first half of the 20th century, just about every man in town was employed by one of the quarries, especially Big Ledge Quarry, owned by the Davidson family. As was common in the “melting pot” known as America, the Davidson family patriarch, John Keay “Jack” Davidson immigrated from Aberdeen, Scotland (another quarry town) in 1888 and settled in Lithonia, where he founded the Davidson Granite Company in 1895. This Georgia company employed many Black and White locals as well as immigrants, stonecutters from Scotland and Sicily who worked seasonally. The company’s expansion into Davidson Mineral Properties and the successful creation of a host of other affiliate businesses saw the next two generations of Davidson men at the helm.

This success continued until early 1972, when Charles Davidson, Jr., “then-President of one of the largest granite products companies in the world, made a monumental decision to prevent a massive mountain of granite owned by the Davidson family from being developed by one of the company’s competitors and donated it to the DeKalb County Government to be conserved endlessly as a public greenspace.” (DeKalb County Government website) This action, on behalf of Davidson created the Davidson-Arabia Mountain Nature Preserve, a haven for the continued preservation of Lithonia’s (now Stonecrest’s) natural environment.  

The Davidson family are a true testament of the American Dream and the adage of “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps”. The family was able to attain land, financial success, and community respect, and for some Lithonia residents… fear. As mentioned earlier, the duality of the American experiment shows us that the great feats of some come at the expense and turbulent trials of others. The 2008 autobiography of another Lithonia shining star depicts that reality all too well.  

The Other Side Of The Tracks: Growing Up Black In Lithonia

Howard Nathaniel Lee was born July 28, 1934, on a sharecropping farm in Lithonia. It goes without saying that being born Black in Lithonia during the peak of Jim Crow segregation was no easy feat to overcome. Nonetheless, Lee went on to graduate from the Lithonia Colored School, now preserved as the Bruce Street School Ruins, the historically Black, Fort Valley State College (now University), and also earned a Master’s degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 1969, he was elected as the first Black Mayor of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, making him the first Black mayor of any majority-white city in the South. Overnight, he became a household name for this. He served as mayor until 1975 and later served two separate terms in the North Carolina Senate, from 1991 to 1995 and again from 1997 until 2003.

His resume is an acclaim to all that Black people are despite the natural and… created hurdles of life. His autobiography gives readers a first-hand glimpse into the realities of growing up poor and Black during a time when being Black was a crime punishable by death at the hands of men with gleaming reputations, but hearts filled with hatred. In Chapter 5 (titled “Growing up in Lithonia”) of this autobiography entitled The Courage to Lead: One Man’s Journey in Public Service, Lee graphically details a tenth-grade interaction with Charlie Davidson, Sr., who was a lifetime chairman of the county school board of education. This interaction is par-for-the-course of the time but still an alarming testament to the bigotry of the era.  

As was common for the period of segregation, Lithonia had two schools, one for white students and another for Black students. The quality of the materials between the schools was incomparable, with the whites-only, Lithonia High School having the best and newest items. As a tenth grader, Lee was a member of the Lithonia Colored School basketball team. However, due to structural and systemic racism, there was no funding to build an adequate gym or practice court. In preparation for an upcoming game against the nearby Conyers team, the Lithonia Colored School coach reached out to the new Lithonia High School principal (who was from the North) to inquire about the possibility of the Black team practicing in the white school’s gymnasium since a rain had muddied their outdoor practice ground. Surprisingly, the principal agreed to the request and the joyous student basketball team made their way to Lithonia High School. Lee wrote on page 55 of his autobiography:

We changed into our faded and bedraggled uniforms in the locker room and took to the court. We had been practicing about a half an hour when suddenly the doors burst open and there stood a group of angry-looking white men. We recognized most of them as Klansmen. What was most shocking, however, was that heading the group was “Mr. Charlie” Davison, the chairman of the county school board of education [and owner of the Davidson Granite Company]. He wasn’t a Klansman, but a sympathizing manipulator, as were most upper-class whites.

He yelled, “Who the hell is in charge of you niggers?” The coach, obviously very nervous, responded, “I am, Mr. Davidson.” Davidson then asked, “What the hell you doing in this gymnasium?” Coach said that he had asked the principal and coach if he could hold a practice there after the white team finished. Davidson then said, “Ya’ll stay right here and don’t you move. I’m going and get them boys over here.”

After inquiring with the white principal and learning that they were indeed there with permission, Davidson scolded the principal and said: “You, you mean, you let these niggers come in here and contaminate our gym? You mean you had the gall to create this kind of problem? I guess next you’re going to want to let them in the classrooms.”  

“The principal remained very calm and showed no signs of nervousness,” Lee recalled, “as Davidson continued to rant and rave.” Upon finding out that the coach and students of the Lithonia Colored School had done no wrong other than being Black in a white school gym, Davidson told the Colored School’s coach, “Ok, I guess this ain’t your fault this time. So, we gonna let you go, but if you are ever caught anywhere near this school in the future, we will not have any mercy, do you understand?”

The next day the white principal was fired. When the Black students clothing, that had been hurriedly left in the white gym, was returned by a Lithonia police officer, Lee recalls the officer saying of the white principal, “That’s what we do for nigger lovers around here.”

Aftermath Of Crossing The Color Line

After reading this story, my co-author Jeff and I dug deep into the leadership history for Lithonia High School to try to find a name for the unsung hero, the northern-born principal. But Lithonia’s yearbook archive did not go far back enough for him to be traced. We still don’t know his name, or what became of him.

A few weeks later after that incident, when new basketballs were delivered to the Lithonia Colored School, the staff and basketball team thought that a peace offering had been made by the white administration at Lithonia High School. Imagine their surprise when they found out that the delivery was a mistake and the balls were intended for the students at Lithonia High School. In a twisted turn, since the students at the Lithonia Colored School had already touched the balls, they were allowed to keep them because the white administration at Lithonia High didn’t want the now “tainted” balls. Following this incident, and to cut down confusion between the two schools, the Lithonia Colored School was renamed the Bruce Street School. Lee wrote on page 57 of The Courage to Lead:

There was no public notice, no outcry, and no public input. It was just done to avoid future delivery mix-ups. It felt strange that I would end the eleventh grade at Lithonia Colored high but enter the twelfth grade and graduate from Bruce Street High. There was a side benefit for the seven of us who comprised the senior class. We were delighted that we would not have the world “colored” on our diploma.

It would be another generation before Davidson’s son gave the mountain to DeKalb County, with a caveat that it be named the Davidson-Arabia Mountain Nature Preserve. It’s still a common name throughout East Metro Atlanta, on Davidson Drive and the Lithonia-Davidson Library. What to make of this, and the legacy of a man that created opportunity for Black families through quarrying jobs while also trying to keep them down publicly and civically? It speaks to that racialized duality of our history.

On the eve of America’s 250^th birthday, stories like these are ever more important as we work to collectively remember where this nation started, what has happened in the middle, and how we got to where we are today. As the history and culture field faces unprecedented ethical challenges at the hands of those who are too afraid to realistically address why several American subcultures had to be created so that all the people of this country could live in one nation, under a few peoples’ God, and with a semblance of liberty and justice for some. Our aim should be to tell these histories with vigor, authenticity, and candor. These stories are not being told solely to sully the names and reputations of a privileged few. They are being told to remind future generations what hatred with unchecked power can do to those who hold the least privilege.  

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If you’d like to learn more, Howard Lee will be be speaking virtually and taking questions at our 4th Annual Juneteenth Storytelling Festival on June 17, 1-3pm. Copies of his book will be available for purchase as well. Please register here.