Black -owned businesses are keeping the heritage of Atlanta Trailbazer Lottie Watkins alive. They just have a request.

In southwestern Atlanta, black-owned businesses are keeping the history of their neighborhoods alive-and everything begins with a cup of coffee.

Black -owned cafes and cooperatives in the area, highly inspired by local business Lottie Watkins, are creating spaces that help sharing stories about the rich city culture and promote black entrepreneurship.

Atlanta was ranked in the worst city for income inequality In a 2024 report Gobankingrates. Aaron Fender, co -founder of Portrait Cafe, wants to help in the bridge GAP and hopes his small store can be a catalyst for the community.

Following the steps of a trail

He is following in the footsteps of Watkins – the first black woman in Atlanta who became a licensed real estate mediator and founder of Lottie Watkins Enterprises in 1960, according to her necrology. She died in February 2017 at the age of 98.

Watkins bought a building on Gordon Street, now Ralph David Abernathy Boulevard, known as Lottie Watkins buildings, and saved space for other minority-owned businesses to move brown portrait.

“She was really a caretaker of our community,” Fender told Watkins, who served as a member of the George’s House of Representatives from 1977 to 1980 and mentoring dozens who fought for the rights of black Americans during the movement of the civil rights.

In an ode for Watkins, the brown portrait hangs art that represents the local icon, which uses customers in the line leading to the counter containing black household photos.

“They are cultural objects that tell a story and have a history of them,” Fender said. “Regardless of your race, we invite you to come and understand our story too.”

“Viv Latte” of the Cafe Portrait, a knot for “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” Matrierch Family Vivian Banks, is among the many hits of cafe.

“Everyone needs a VIV aunt … someone to care and love you, but also correct and type to push you.” Said Fender. “I think that’s what the community is too, right?”

In many ways, Watkins was regarded as the Matriarch of the southwestern Atlanta. Her grandchildren remember her as a leader and mentor.

“They called that lady to do it,” Jai Jackson CBS News told. “In her tombstone. That’s what she says.”

“Everything new for Atlanta or the Black Community, you had to run it from Lottie Watkins and get its advice,” Kelli Bacote Ross, Jackson’s sister said.

Joyce Bacote, Watkins’s daughter agreed, and her husband, Samuel, remembered when Lottie Watkins Enterprises was the only black owned business on Gordon Street.

Members of the family said Watkins would be proud of local leaders keeping her heritage alive.

“Black, entrepreneur, young, this is the type of energy my mother had,” Joyce Baycote said. “Her legacy there, this will be appreciated.”

“First Aunt and Uncle” of cascade heights

Angela Ingram, founder of Cafe Bartique at Cascade Road, said the story of Watkins brings tears to her eyes. Portrait coffee is the ingredient of the Ingram and both businesses are connected to more than roads.

“It was a deliberate decision to use a coffee dish that is on the road, and also a black dish, because we want to make sure our dollars stay in this community,” Ingram said.

Ingram is a third -generation restorer. She left her corporate work with Nordstrom to follow the path of her grandmother, mother and aunts owned restaurants in Aberdeen, Mississippi.

“They call me Titus.” Said Ingram. “We are the aunt and the first uncle of this cascade area.”

“We stand on that 10 fingers down. If you come here, it would greet or someone else in the kitchen.”

Ingram not only fills the protectors with warm soups and grilled cheese croissants. She said she also serves “pure love”.

“This is what I have taken my whole life from the women who grew up to me is the love and acceptance of everyone,” Ingram said.

A simple request

Regarding Cafe Bartique is the Ke’nekti cooperative, founded by Kiyomi Rollins, a long resident of WestView. The space, which awaits a cafe, is inside an old mechanical store.

The store describes itself online as a “third space liberated from black, where the community collects to exchange ideas”. People can gather to work and exchange ideas, symbolic of other places such as churches, barbers and corner shops where black culture blooms.

“It is literally rooted in the history of third spaces in communities that are historically neighborhoods under springs, undeserved or black heritage,” Rollins said. “When you look at the Civil Rights Bed, people met, gathered, talked innovative ideas in spaces such as Ke’nekt.”

Rollins was inspired to start the collective to help prevent the relocation of other black -owned businesses after its rent for its skin and the business of the hair product.

A Harvard research data bonds new coffee shops with rising housing prices. In Atlanta, it is not just the cafes that use genre. Beltline is also contributing to the highest prices of housing and the relocation of low -income families, according to the professor and author of urban studies of George State University Dan Immergluck.

“Being in this space contributes to this,” Rollins said. “Once I am aware of anything that happens in the space where we can contribute to anything that can cause harm, we will answer.”

That is why Rollins said she is giving priority to community members with “the slightest approach or voices”, serving coffee with fair trade, sharing profits with her community and feeding hungry families.

Her only request: Support black businesses such as Cafe Portrait, Cafe Bartique and Cooperative Ke’nekt.

“Come into these black donkeys and buy some coffee with black donkeys,” Rollins said.