CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT TO POWER SHARING
After World War II in 1945, Jim Crow practices were still a harsh fact of life. There were too many "Whites Only" and "Colored Only" signs in the South, including Atlanta. You wouldn't even think about living in areas where Black Atlantans now park their Jaguars, Benz and SUVs. For Atlanta there were several turning points.
Over 18,000 Black Atlantans voted in the Democratic primary of 1946, after federal courts outlawed the "All White" Democratic Party Primary. With Black voting power on the rise, the white male power structure had to acquiesce to African American demands for low-income housing and a few more requests. But Atlanta had a larger collection of ingredients that melded together to push for the end of segregation.
Morehouse men taught by school president, Dr Benjamin Mays, demanded more. College students from Morehouse, such as Martin L. King, Jr., led other many other Atlanta University Center college students to organize peaceful sit-ins and protests that forced the city to desegregate public accommodations in the 1950s. Many of them received spiritual, organizational and monetary support from the congregations of Wheat Street Baptist church lead by Rev. William Holmes Borders, Sr., as well as Ebenezer Baptist, Butler CME and Big Bethel AME church congregations.
Credit also goes to white civic leaders who had the foresight to help engineer a peaceful transition in the best interests of Atlanta. Rather than be bull-headed like their contemporaries in Memphis, Richmond, Nashville and Birmingham, they worked behind the scenes to assure white business owners know that they would not be alone in the transition to a new Atlanta and that their businesses would eventually benefit. The city benefited in a number of ways.
First, Atlanta avoided the anti-civil rights violence so prevalent in Birmingham or other Southern cities. Second, white leaders engaged Black leaders in the transition. Together they crafted Atlanta's image as a place of peaceful transition suitable to conduct business and conferences. This image combined with pleasant weather and strategic decisions to build large convention facilities and a huge airport made Atlanta a hit with corporate executives. In 1950 Atlanta was about the same population, had as many conferences and Fortune 500 companies as its contemporary major cities of the South. By the 1960 it was evident that more industries began holding conferences here and more companies began opening major branches here.
On land once belonging to Creek and Cherokee Indians, Atlanta has become the unofficial capital of the New South. In 1812 the first European Americans settled in Fort Peachtree, bringing enslaved persons of African descent with them. In its earliest American settlement, the area had few slaves compared to the major slave-trading centers of Augusta, Savannah and Charleston. The slave population multiplied between 1840-1860, just before the start of the Civil War. It happened because Atlanta, then called "Terminus", became the supply center and railroad terminus for the South with four major rail lines and the cotton industry boomed. As our nation has too frequently proven, anytime you marry Old South money-making activities with major distribution centers, slave-holders and their enslaved people were attracted like magnets.
Partly to punish the Confederacy, Union General Sherman ordered the troops to set fire to Atlanta in 1864. By the end of the Civil War, African Americans enjoyed empowerment as full citizens for the first time, even as Union forces stripped privileges from white Southerners. Despite its inaccurate depiction portraying most Blacks as "Happy-to-serve-Massa" drones after the war, the movie Gone With The Wind realistically captures White Southerners sense of loss as their slave-holding estates and city burned. The Old South really was gone with the wind.
By 1870, African Americans comprised nearly half of Atlanta's residents. During Reconstruction African Americans elected their own city councilmen and other politicians. The threat of Black political power to European American hegemony festered until Union troops pulled out in 1877. Sensing the moment, European Americans in the higher-ranking Georgia Legislature changed the voting rules process in city district elections to an at-large process. No African American could win an at-large election when race was the deciding factor; this virtually stripped Black political power. Despite or perhaps because of unjust political losses and emerging segregation, a solid black economic base developed with a staunch loyalty towards Black institutions. Black workers enriched the churches that that led to the development of Morehouse, Atlanta, Clark, Spelman, and Morris Brown colleges. Atlanta Life Insurance and Citizens Trust Bank developed on Sweet Auburn Avenue and Black middleclass neighborhoods like Summer Hill emerged in south Atlanta.
In a 1895 Atlanta Exposition speech, Booker T. Washington was enthusiastically received when he preached that Black economic empowerment was the practical road for African Americans to take. To paraphrase him, "We only need to build our communities, rather than fight for civil rights". Washington's noble and practical vision was smashed by the harsh reality of the Atlanta Race Riot of 1906, when it became apparent to all that Black economic development could not proceed at a natural pace without civil rights protection. Incited by newspapers reporting false charges of Black men raping white women, white mobs, assisted by policemen, burned down the Brownsville district.
In five days, the riot killed 25 African Americans and destroyed 1,000 homes. In addition to crippling Black business, the riots bifurcated race relations. On one side it sparked an interracial dialogue between moderate voices, on the other it rekindled Klu Klux Klan activity. In such an environment, the historic Black colleges of Atlanta blossomed. Included among their teaching staff, was the great intellectual W. E. B. DuBois.
This tension between European American moderates and the Klan dominated racial relations in Atlanta for the next 65 years. While race relations improved somewhat after World War I, strict segregation was a fact of life. In the midst of those times, John Wesley Dobbs made a name for himself as the pioneering businessman in the Auburn Avenue district, known as Sweet Auburn. Black veterans, returning from Europe during World War II with an acquired taste for what human dignity feels like, sparked the social activism that changed Atlanta and America. Jim Crow laws and customs would eventually falter.
As the home of Dr Martin Luther King, Jr., Ralph Abernathy, Andrew Young, John Lewis, Hosea Williams, and Joseph Lowery, Atlanta played a pivotal role in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s. Embracing W.E.B. Du Bois charge towards intellectual development, Booker T Washington's self-help philosophy and Dr. King's integrationist vision, Atlanta became the first city to develop a complete infrastructure for Black economic empowerment. By fair elections, they seized the mayor’s office and several city council positions. Church pastors did an excellent job of coordinating activities. Atlanta University Complex graduated large numbers of students who preferred to stay here. Small Black business formation accelerated. These factors integrated into the city's power structure as Atlanta began moving from the philosophical position of a Civil Rights Movement to Power Sharing in the metropolis of Atlanta.
How did Atlanta land on so many traveler radar screens in the last half of the 20th century? Credit vision and good race relations for a Southern city. In the 1960s when most Southern cities lacked vision, Atlanta built the largest convention center and dramatically expanded its airport, thereby attracting more hotel chains and conferences. Strong Black leadership and interracial cooperation prevented Atlanta riots that plagued nearly every other large city in the decade. In the 1970s when most Southern cities lagged in Affirmative Action, Atlanta’s Black-led city government by Maynard Jackson and white business leaders worked together to win federal awards that expanded public infrastructure so essential to business and tourism. Maynard came from great stock. His grandfather was the great John Wesley Dobbs. In the 1980s, when many corporate headquarters exited cities, Atlanta kept its business jewels Downtown, Midtown and in Buckhead. Ted Turner put Atlanta on the national news map when he built CNN headquarters Downtown.
Make no mistake … Atlanta has glass ceiling, public school, and profiling issues like every other city. So what makes Atlanta the center of attraction for African Americans to visit and/or move here? Atlanta celebrates the most significant concentration of African Americans empowered in business, government, higher education, religion, cultural arts and social organizations relative to the percentage of its European American counterparts.
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