Earlier this month, the world lost a rock n’ roll legend in Little Richard.
Richard, born Richard Wayne Penniman in Macon’s Historic Pleasant Hill Neighborhood, passed away surrounded by family in his Nashville home at the age of 87.
After opening for Sister Rosetta Tharpe at the Macon City Auditorium in 1947, he joined the band Buster Brown’s Orchestra in 1950 and picked up the name “Little Richard.”
Richard Penniman’s name is synonymous with some notable places throughout the city of Macon like the previously mentioned Macon City Auditorium or the Seventh-Day Adventist Church on Edna Place where he was ordained as a minister.
Little Richard grew up in a shotgun-style home on Fifth Ave. in the Historic Pleasant Hill Neighborhood, a historic black community developed in the 1870s that was dispersed after Interstate 75 expanded through the neighborhood in the 1960s.
