The Tybee Community

By Josh Brown

Some described it as closed-off, poor and dangerous. Others called it home.

Perceptions of Macon’s former Tybee neighborhood depend on who you ask.

“The Tybee community in Macon is the oldest unrecorded black community in Macon,” said Leroy Thomas, who grew up in Tybee. “We can’t substantiate it through records because most of these people were not literate so they didn’t record their history. But based on the slave records, Tybee is the oldest black community in Macon and it’s no longer in existence, as far as the community. There’s one operating church in Tybee and most of the people in it in that area.”

Nestled near the brickyards and warehouses of Bay Street, Tybee was inhabited by the city’s darker-skinned African Americans. Thanks to the street layouts and railroads, it was quite literally the wrong side of the tracks.

The neighborhood spread outwards from the coal chute that still stands on Seventh Street. The area was largely industrial, hosting brick, rail and oil companies, as well as small businesses.

“Every kind of business you needed was in Tybee, run by black people. There were dance halls, grocery stores, shoe shops, pressing club,” said Alice Bailey, who has studied the area’s history.

The areas adjacent to Tybee — from Poplar Street all the way down Broadway were full of black-owned businesses, she said.

“(They) were all black businesses,” Bailey said. “The Leonard’s liquor store. The beauty shop. The barber shop. And then you would skip Broadway and Poplar, cause that was the farmer’s market all the way down. And then you would come to Greenwood Bottom. That’s where your bars were, your clubs, your jazz clubs, your blues clubs. Smaller grocery stores. Barbecue joints. And all of those businesses accommodated people from Tybee. But just as you turned the corner at Hazel was the Roxy.”

The community also held hundreds of houses.

Despite the environment that permeated its streets, it is fondly remembered by those that lived there.

“I loved my community,” said Thomas, who was Macon’s first African American television host. “All I knew was home. You go home.”

By all accounts, residents of Tybee were close, forming a tightly knit bond that lasted until the government targeted the area for a renewal project in the 1960s and 70s.

“They called it urban renewal, we called it the urban killer,” Thomas said. “To me it was sad and that’s because I had an affinity for Tybee. I loved my community because that’s all I knew.”

After this, the neighborhood was split, its residents dispersing to other neighborhoods in Macon such as Anthony Terrace and Tindall Heights.

The Roxy, like so many other businesses and homes, was left behind. It became a memory held by a rapidly dwindling number of Maconites.