Walk down Auburn Avenue on the right afternoon and you might hear jazz drifting out of the old Haugabrooks Funeral Home building, mixed with the steady rhythm of a whisk working matcha. That sound belongs to Coffee Was Black, a tea and coffee club that owner Malcolm Voltaire opened in 2022 inside a room with nearly a century of Black business history behind it.
The Atlanta Voice recently spent time in the shop with Voltaire, and the portrait that comes through is of a place where coffee is the reason you walk in, and the conversation is the reason you stay.
A room with a past
In 1929, Geneva Morton Haugabrooks took over this same room and went on to become a multimillion-dollar Black business owner during the Jim Crow era. Sweet Auburn was once called the richest Black street in the world, and her success is part of that story. Voltaire sees himself as carrying that thread forward, running his own business where she ran hers.
The setting matters to him. Paintings by local artists line the walls, and on a typical day the tables fill with photographers, painters, fashion designers and students who are in no hurry to leave. Voltaire describes it simply as coffee for creatives.
Flavors from home
Voltaire grew up in Atlanta with a Haitian father and a Jamaican mother, and the menu reads like a family tree. He told the Voice he did not care for coffee growing up, but his dad's daily cup of Bustelo eventually won him over and became something the two shared.
That background shows up in signature drinks like Wah Gwan, Lion of Judah and Yardie, and in ingredients such as ginger, hibiscus and sorrel. The first drink he ever made, The Joy, is named for his mother and features sorrel, a drink he notes nearly every Caribbean family makes its own way, no matter which island they call home.
From fashion to the espresso bar
Before coffee, Voltaire was a fashion designer. His brand, Jesus Was Black, drew attention across the Southeast, and after a collection drop in Nashville a friend asked him what came next. He chewed on that question for the whole four-hour drive back to Atlanta and landed on an affordable, everyday product people buy daily: coffee.
He sees the shop as another chapter of his fashion work rather than the end of it. Where a spiritually rooted clothing line was a harder sell for some people, coffee, as he put it to the Voice, is universal.
Why the name
The name points back to Ethiopia, where coffee was first discovered in the Kaffa region in the 9th century, long before espresso machines and Italian café drinks shaped how most of the world thinks about it. Voltaire wants people to remember those roots, and to see the shop as a model of something made by and for the community, with the money circling back into it.
For a street that has always been about Black ownership and enterprise, it is a fitting addition. Next time you spend a day exploring Sweet Auburn, Coffee Was Black is a good excuse to slow down for a cup and a look at the art on the walls.
Source: The Atlanta Voice, January 28, 2026.