Some History about Chalk Level

Chalk Level

“Chalk Level, which is a Summer resort for the wealthy colored people of Newnan, as we learned…”

The Newnan herald. (Newnan, Ga.) 1865-1887, Sep. 15, 1881

 

“Black schools were established after the Civil War. Among the first was a school located near the depot in Newnan in a house belonging to the railroad. By 1881 a black school was established in Chalk Level, one of the wealthier black areas. Apparently, some slave owners had taught or hired teachers to teach slaves reading, writing, and mathematics. Some of those educated slaves were highly skilled craftsmen who were hired out by their owners to builders who constructed some of the fine homes in Newnan and Coweta County. W.B. Pinson’s skilled slave workers helped to build the Atlanta and West Point Railroad. In payment for their work Pinson received railroad stock, which is still held by his descendants.” (History of Coweta County, GA. Chapter XV)

 

The Chalk Level area is located about three blocks from the Coweta County Court House. Its boundaries were Atlanta and West Point Railroad on the West, Broad Street on the North, Ball Street on the East, and Central Railway of Georgia (originally Griffin then McIntosh) on the South, including a cemetery just north of Chalk Level and a cemetery just south of Chalk Level. Newnan’s “Old” Colored Cemetery (Farmer Street Cemetery), the first African American cemetery in Newnan, lies to the north and was the first burial grounds for the residents of Chalk Level and other early African Americans of the area, although only one grave marker remains. When that closed on Dec. 1, 1893, and land was purchased just south of Chalk Level to become what we now know as Eastview and is still an active cemetery to this day. 

 

One of the hundreds of people buried in the “old colored cemetery” is W.H. Groves, who was a founding pastor of the M.E. Church in Chalk Level. Other names of the buried are being compiled from obituaries found in the early Newnan newspapers and from records of interviews taken from the elders of local families. One of the more famous Chalk Level residents that is buried in Eastview is Dr. John Henry Jordan, the first African American doctor in Newnan and organized the first Medical Aid Organization for black people in Coweta. The organization met bi-monthly and held lectures on sociology, hygiene and various diseases.