Forsyth 1912: Restoring the Legacy of Bagley Park
Preserving the Legacy of a Black Neighborhood Erased for Buckhead Park Development
Editor’s note: As part of a new initiative at Atlanta History Center to explore the 1912 lynching of Rob Edwards and the forced migration of Black residents from Forsyth County, AHC’s Digital Storytelling team is producing a suite of content related to the history and effect of the displacement. Digital Storytelling also invites descendants of the displacement to contact them at forsyth1912@atlantahistorycenter.com.
By Sophia Dodd
Digital Storytelling Research Assistant
In the early 1950s, Fulton County demolished Bagley Park, a Black neighborhood in Buckhead, to create a public park. County officials promised to preserve the community’s legacy by retaining its name. For three decades, the park was known as “Bagley Park.” However, in 1980, officials renamed it Frankie Allen Park after a local Buckhead Baseball umpire, thereby erasing the last trace of the Black neighborhood that formerly enslaved people had founded in the 1870s.
Originally called Macedonia Park, the settlement included Mount Olive Church and Mount Olive Cemetery. In 1912, William Bagley, a Black resident and landowner from Forsyth County, along with his wife Ida and their children, sought refuge in Macedonia Park after white residents expelled Black residents from Forsyth following accusations of a local white woman’s sexual assault. In 1921, developer Frank Owens formalized the neighborhood layout, and by 1929, William Bagley purchased six lots in Macedonia Park.
Bagley became a cherished community leader in Macedonia Park, and residents affectionately referred to the area as “Bagley Park,” considering William Bagley their unofficial mayor. The Black working-class neighborhood, home to around 40 families, had several Black-owned businesses, including a grocery store, restaurant, and a forge or smithy, along with multiple churches.
In the 1940s, Fulton County installed sewer lines for indoor plumbing in neighboring Buckhead communities but excluded Bagley Park. As a result, residents had to keep using outhouses. Buckhead’s white residents complained about the lack of sewage lines and requested Bagley Park’s demolition to make way for a public park. Instead of providing sewer lines, Fulton County purchased properties or acquired them through eminent domain. By 1952, they had demolished all Black homes and businesses, forcing residents to move. A public park, preserving Mount Olive Cemetery, was built on the land and eventually became the home of Buckhead Baseball.
The park remained named after Frankie Allen Park for more than 40 years until an initiative by Buckhead Heritage Society and Elon Butts Osby, granddaughter of former Bagley Park resident, William Bagley, led the charge to change the name back.
Osby said her grandparents, William and Ida Bagley, are buried in Mount Olive Cemetery, but she does not know where. There are only a few surviving headstones in the cemetery. Osby was born after her family left Bagley Park. Still, her mother told her stories of her grandparents, the community, and how the county took over the land for a park but promised to continue using the name, Bagley. When officials renamed the park, no one alerted descendants of William Bagley about the change.
Osby only found out the city had changed its name when she drove by one day and saw a new sign with the new name.
“I drove through Pharr Road one day, and it said, Frankie Allen Park,” she said. “And I was flabbergasted. I thought my mother was going to die when they told her because they said they were never going to change it.”
Osby asked Atlanta officials for the original park sign that read “Bagley Park.” She presented it to her mother on her last birthday, and it has remained a family keepsake. The park’s renaming deeply hurt the Bagley family, and their pain was exacerbated when they discovered that Fulton County sold Mount Olive Cemetery to a developer in 2009. The developer intended to relocate the graves and build on the land. Upon learning about the developer’s plans, Wright Mitchell, a founder of Buckhead Heritage Society and an Atlanta-based attorney, filed a lawsuit to prevent the cemetery’s removal.
The lawsuit revealed that Fulton County improperly sold the cemetery. For many years, the county incorrectly taxed the property, which was not designated as a cemetery in their records. In Georgia, public cemeteries are tax-exempt. The county sold the land to pay off the back taxes of the cemetery, which should not have been taxed in the first place. The developer bought the property sight unseen but planned to remove the graves under Georgia’s abandoned cemetery law when he found out it was a gravesite.
Buckhead Heritage Society argued that the cemetery was public and thus could not be relocated. They won the lawsuit and became the official caretakers of Mount Olive Cemetery in 2020. Buckhead Heritage Society has continued its commitment to preserving the history of Bagley Park and its admired mayor, William Bagley, through his granddaughter. The group made Osby a Buckhead Heritage Board Member.
In July 2022, Buckhead Heritage Society hosted Osby as part of their speaker series to talk about the history of Bagley Park and preservation efforts at Mount Olive Cemetery. After Osby’s presentation, multiple Buckhead residents asked why the park’s name could not be changed back to Bagley. After all, older, longtime residents of Buckhead only knew the site as Bagley Park before the change in 1980.
Buckhead Heritage Society started a task force to reinstate the park’s original name. It only took four months for the Atlanta City Council and Atlanta mayor, Andre Dickens, to unanimously pass legislation in November 2022 changing the park’s name to Historic Bagley Park. The legislation came a month after Elevate Atlanta conducted a wreath-laying ceremony at Mount Olive Cemetery to honor former Black residents and kick off a larger-scale preservation project for the cemetery. Buckhead Heritage Society and Atlanta History Center President and Chief Executive Officer Sheffield Hale supported the event.
When asked why Buckhead Heritage felt it was important to form a task force on reinstating the original name of the park, Mitchell said that “the renaming of the park in 1980 represented a further eradication of the rich African American community that once existed on that land.”
Osby, a Buckhead Heritage Board member, was able to put a personal touch on just how painful this experience was for her family and all the other African American families that were forced out of their homes.
Restoring the name back to Bagley is one of many ways Buckhead Heritage is honoring the history of the Bagley Park community. Education on the history for current and future Buckhead residents “about the injustices that were perpetrated” on former Bagley Park residents is of utmost importance, according to Mitchell.
The athletic fields at the park are still named after Frankie Allen, but the park itself now honors the Bagley Park community. The change marks an important moment in history as Atlanta and Fulton County continue to grapple with their record of systematically removing Black neighborhoods through eminent domain, slum removal, and urban renewal. In many instances, the physical representations of these former communities no longer exist. This makes the process of naming an essential aspect of preserving these histories. With the renaming of the park, William Bagley and Frankie Allen are both recognized for their historical importance to Buckhead.
Buckhead Heritage Society has raised enough funds to enact a master plan to further preserve Mount Olive Cemetery. Preservation will include building a wall on Pharr Road, fencing the cemetery, creating an entryway to the cemetery, and adding a historic marker. Buckhead Heritage Society is currently raising funds to develop interpretive signage for the park, which tells the story of the Bagley Park community.
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