The History of the
Carrie Steele-Pitts Home
1829: Carrie Steele is born a slave in Georgia and is orphaned as a young child.
Carrie Steele LoganMid 1800’s: Steele works as a maid for the Central of Georgia Railway at Atlanta's Union Station. She saves most of her $100 monthly salary for a down payment on a home and becomes one of Atlanta’s first black property owners.
The growing number of homeless African-American children wandering the streets of Downtown Atlanta breaks her heart. She lets them play in an empty boxcar during the day, where she can keep an eye on them, and takes them home with her at night for a hot bath, a warm meal and a safe place to sleep.
Steele soon has more children than she can comfortably house in her humble abode on Wheat Street, later known as Auburn Avenue.
Late 1800’s: Steele, who learned to read and write as a slave, puts her business sense to good use. She writes an autobiography and sells copies on the street to raise money to buy a larger home. She also meets and marries a minister Josehia Logan from New York.
1888: She obtains a charter on October 12, 1888 from the Atlanta City Council for the Carrie Steele Orphans’ Home.
1892: Her dream comes true. She builds a brick, three-story home large enough for 50 children with $5,000 she managed to raise by selling her own home and from proceeds of her autobiography. The Home’s original mission is to be a place where homeless, abandoned, orphaned, abused and neglected children can be educated, study religion and learn the skills necessary to gain employment when they reach adulthood.
1900: Carrie Steele Logan dies at the age of 71 and is buried in Atlanta's Oakland Cemetery. Her grave is marked with an epitaph that reads: "The mother of orphans. She hath done what she could."
1908: Clara Maxwell Pitts becomes the Home’s director. During her tenure, which ends in 1950, Pitts organizes a women's auxiliary board and establishes a board of trustees.
1924: The Carrie Steele Orphan’s Home scores a coup by receiving financial support from the Atlanta Community Chest (which later becomes the United Way).
1936: Twelve-year-old Ollivette Eugenia Smith moves to the home with her two younger brothers when their divorced mother can no longer care for them. Their August 31st arrival marks the beginning of Ms. Ollivette’s long history with the Home.
1950: In recognition of Clara Pitts, the Home changes its name to the Carrie Steele-Pitts Home. Ms. Ollivette, now a young woman with a Home Economics degree from Spelman College and a Master’s in Social Work from Atlanta University, becomes the Home’s first professional social worker.
1963: CSPH executive director Mae Yates, Clara Pitts’s daughter, moves the Home to a sylvan, 23 acre campus on Fairburn Road in northwest Atlanta.
1976: Ollivette Smith, (who becomes Allison by marriage) is appointed executive director.
1998: Carrie Steele Logan is posthumously named a Georgia Woman of Achievement. The Georgia House of Representatives passes a resolution honoring Ms. Allison’s work as executive director.
2004: The campus expands to 26 acres when the Ollivette Eugenia Smith Allison Life Learning Center is built. The state-of-the-art facility has a swimming pool, gymnasium, computer lab and other recreational amenities for the Home’s youth.
2009: The Home celebrates its 121st anniversary with a Salute at the State Capitol. Ollivette Allison retires at age 86, after dedicating nearly 60 years of service to the Home. Evelyn Lavizzo, Ph.D., the Home’s clinical program director for 20 years, is named executive director.
2010: The CSPH holds a Legacy Gala on June 5th at the Georgia Aquarium, to honor the life of Ollivette Allison and to raise money to offset the Home’s $300,000 deficit.