This Old House: Restoration honors Black Atlanta postmaster
ATLANTA (AP) — Most contractors told them they would tear it down. A two-story five-bedroom Victorian built around 1900, it was abandoned and collapsing, with vines reaching its rafters. Elegant features were scavenged long ago. The house’s place in American history was at risk of disappearing.
An Atlanta couple bought the property nevertheless, hoping to fix it up and live there with their two children. Eventually they found partners who also recognized the importance of the house built by early civil rights activist Luther Judson Price.
Kysha and Johnathan Hehn's renovation plans shifted to fast-forward when a neighbor connected them with “This Old House.” The PBS show chronicled their renovation in eight episodes to stream Sept. 29, weaving Black history in with its usual home improvement tips.
“An old house that has fallen into disrepair is our bread and butter,” the show’s host, Kevin O’Connor, said before a scene involving an antique door. “But Kysha and Jonathan continue to surprise me with their determination that anyone who walks through the house is aware of the legacy.”
Born enslaved by his plantation owner-father, Price was an early Clark College graduate who served as the federally appointed postmaster of South Atlanta, executive secretary of a Masonic order and superintendent of the South Atlanta Methodist Episcopal Church, while his wife, Minnie Wright Price, a graduate of Atlanta University, “shared each of these positions with her husband,” according to their obituaries in the Atlanta Daily World.
The Prices also led voter registration drives for African Americans and organized support for the Republican Party of their time, according to the Atlanta Public Schools, which has a middle school named in his honor.
In the house, the Hehns now plan to...