Green’s Dictionary of Slang

buttermilk bottom n.

[the stereotyped link between buttermilk and black appetites; the term was coined for an impoverished black section of Atlanta, Georgia (cleared in mid-1960s), but spread to towns and cities in the southern states]

(US black) the black area of town.

Show quotations
Atlanta Constit. (GA) 1 Apr. 11/2: About fifty dusky residents of that section of darktown known to police as ‘Buttermilk Bottom’ were rounded up up [etc].
Atlanta Constit. (GA) 1/6: 15 negroes living in Buttermilk Bottom on Techwood drive, were cut off by a flood of water.
Atlanta Constit. (GA) 6 June 12/3: ‘Buttermilk Bottom’ is that section around Butler street [...] statisics showd it to have the highest crime and disease figures in the city.
Atlanta Constit. 25 July 19/2: One [of ‘these blighted residental sections’] is know variously as Black Bottom, Blackberry Bottom or Buttermilk Bottom.
[US]Archdiocese of Atlanta Georgia Bulletin 13 Apr. 🌐 Mrs. R.L. Stephens, a member of the transportation committee, was assigned to pick up a girl at her home in Buttermilk Bottom and take her to the airport.
Robesonian (Lumberton, NC) 29 Jan. 12/2: Such metro Atlanta ghettos as Beacon Hill, Cabbagetown, Buttermilk Bottom and Vine City.
[US]Cincinnati Enquirer (OH) 28 Aug. 4/2: The average black child who comes out of Buttermilk Bottom [...] is going toi be judged as just poor black trash.
[US]C. Major Juba to Jive 75: Buttermilk bottom n. (1920s–40s) a black neighborhood in Atlanta (and in other southern black communities).
[US]St Petersburg Times 1 Nov. 🌐 One of the most colorful judges in Hillsborough County, Mitcham grew up near Fulton County Stadium in Atlanta, in a rough neighborhood called Buttermilk Bottom.