Your friend Jim George thinks you'd be a great addition to Ricochet, so we'd like to offer you a special deal: You can become a member for no initial charge for one month!
Ricochet is a community of like-minded people who enjoy writing about and discussing politics (usually of the center-right nature), culture, sports, history, and just about every other topic under the sun in a fully moderated environment. We’re so sure you’ll like Ricochet, we’ll let you join and get your first month for free. Kick the tires: read the always eclectic member feed, write some posts, join discussions, participate in a live chat or two, and listen to a few of our over 50 (free) podcasts on every conceivable topic, hosted by some of the biggest names on the right, for 30 days on us. We’re confident you’re gonna love it.
Not an easy story to follow, but on my first pass through it seemed there were a lot of bulldozers.
Very enlightening.
Why am I the third comment? This should be #203. It is a terrific piece of detailed, intelligent analysis. I don’t have the inside knowledge of Atlanta to confirm or dispute individual points, but I have confidence the writer knows what he’s talking about.
I’d also like to see a similar in-depth story of MARTA.
Fascinating! Can you recommend some books or articles on this history? Is any of this in Tamar Jacoby’s book? Can’t recall the name now.
The two I’m drawing from are (mainly) Governing Atlanta, which link is in the text, and Floyd Hunter’s Community Power Structure.
It’s from “Governing Atlanta” by Clarence N. Stone. My family for 6 or 7 generations back were from Paulding Co. about 30 miles NW of Atlanta. My family composed of doctors, lawyers, farmers, and a few drunks. A great grand uncle has his statue at the Paulding Co. Courthouse.
http://www.usgennet.org/usa/ga/county/paulding1/bible/BartlettAnna.html
It’s interesting to know what happened to the city from the 1940s and on. Most of my immediate family, left the area in 1880.
When I hear “shovel ready” it’s ‘moving dirt around’ stories like these that I think are a large part of those initiatives.
Fine post @sabrdance, very illuminating – I suspect a similar history in many of our big cities.
And thus, Cobb County had a 10 foot wide “City” to keep Atlanta on its side of the river.
Last time I was there (three weeks ago), the bulldozers are still busy. Yes, I drove. No, it wasn’t a good idea.
Despite this, behold that which is Atlanta. Giving it up would be like the Varsity going out of business. There’s so much wrong with it, and it’s not good for you a bit, but you do develop a hankering for it when it’s not right there. (sigh)
I am on my feet applauding your post @sabrdance. This sounds and feels about right to me. Atlanta was too big to go the consolidation route like Nashville or Jacksonville. Making the sausage ain’t pretty.
Cobb County is an interesting place. I was moaning to a historian in Mariettta about the scarcity of historical documents prior to 1865, and in a very droll tone of voice he stated, “We had an arsonist go through Georgia and burned our courthouse.” Sherman’s “scorched earth” policy of destroying everything in his path, even for civilians who wanted noting to do with the war, was totally evil.
Civilians were rounded up and shipped north to be married off and work in factories by Sherman too. Young girls at that.
I just read an article Avik Roy wrote for Forbes after Trump won Indiana. In one paragraph he uses the word “nativist” four times. This isn’t about the plight of inner-city blacks for Roy. It’s about immigration.
I wasn’t in Atlanta long, from about 2011-2015, and am not there any more. One thing I see is the way Midtown (Peachtree-ish on both sides from about North Avenue for about 20 blocks) is booming. There are tower cranes all over, with big apartment buildings or mixed use going up. The effect will be to further lock up traffic in that part of town. And, as @sabrdance notes and @bryangstephens knows, Atlanta traffic is no fun now.
Thanks for this information. As a genealogist I have missing kids that don’t show up on the 1870 census in either Paulding or Cobb Co., and are not buried in any of the local graveyards. Never thought of looking for them in the north. Will need to do more research. I have copies of court records authorizing some of my cousins to approach any benevolent societies in the North that was willing to help feed the starving people of Paulding Co.
This reinforces, in my mind at least, the power of identify politics, and the attraction it holds for politicians (or anyone) seeking power. It creates single-issue voters whose issue is skin color, and almost any policy prescription can be swapped in or out without risk of losing the voting bloc.
At a high level, Atlanta’s political history seems to fit the leftist political narrative:
The modern Democrat party is good at juggling competing Little Guys.
It’s also ironic that leftism is so concerned with the ‘community’ but manages to split the community up into tiny little competing interest groups.
Got a reference for that?
By the way, Sherman’s wasn’t the first scorched earth campaign in the United States, even though it’s often claimed to be.
General Anthony Wayne did the same thing on his march north from what is now Cincinnati in 1794, destroying villages and many tens of thousands of acres of cornfields. (He estimated the destruction in terms of bushels of corn, but I don’t have those numbers handy.) Some historical archives were probably destroyed, too, and this sort of thing tended to disrupt the Native peoples’ ties with their past and is resented to this very day. Native Americans didn’t have so much capital invested in infrastructure as Georgians did in 1864, but the destruction made it difficult for them to survive and helped lead to their surrender. The surrender documents were signed at Greenville rather than Appomatox.
The only young girls who were rounded up were captives of the Indians. The terms of the Greenville treaty and many other treaties required the Indians to give up their captives. Many of these captives were taken back to their birth homes very much against their will; they preferred to stay with the Indians.
If you’d like to see a town that Sherman skipped, drop by Madison sometime. It’ll take your breath away. A top ten prettiest place to get away from it all. All the Atlanta locals now hate me.
Fantastic municipal history. I love reading historical accounts of cities’ parsed by those whom live-in and love the towns. As someone who has visited Atlanta and awed over your highway system (I’m from Los Angeles, mind you), this was fascinating. Moreover, as a lover of post-reconstruction Southern civil-engineering, this shares a common thread with many city histories in the south. Not ending there, but all over the US–anyplace that was civil engineered before the advent of motor vehicles and needed extreme restructuring after the introduction of Eisenhower’s Interstate system.
As to your question on Republican minority outreach, I’d like to offer my ideas as a Minority growing more unhappy with Democrats. It used to be National Republican candidates had more appeal than local–by their nature City politicians are more procedural and their work often conflicts with “small government ideology”–but recently a heady shift in that paradigm has occurred. Municipal Republican politicians have offered better solutions, at least in my city, and are less bound to the mob mentality Party Rejection of National Politics. Minorities are primed for Conservative proselytism–particularly that of Community investment. A Conservative candidate that packaged this concept of pursuing financial and market gains instead of Government assistance in a pedagogical yet non-derisive manner would make unbelievable in-roads with Black and Hispanic communities.
I’m not sure what to draw from this history regarding racial voting blocks other than that the empowerment of one group generally means the weakening of another.
Affirmative Action programs fuel resentment on all sides.
Sounds like a variation on the Curley Effect, in that it’s the story of mayors happy to trash their city and drive out its residents if the remaining voters will reward them for it.
If we want to show respect, we need to care more about their situation than how they vote. There are several issues that they are concerned about that small-government solutions can help. It may come with a price. One issue blacks recognize is that 2 women and 1 man gain more money from welfare when the man is with a woman whose kids are not his than with a woman who has his kids.
We subsidized single-motherhood instead of marriage. This needs to end and while it doesn’t handle small government, per se, sound families facilitate small government. This will cost us female votes but they don’t vote right, either.
Poor education opportunity for smart, motivated young blacks is dismal, while those more concerned with their family’s economic status is hindered by them learning shakespeare instead of money-making skills. Trade skills in schools and vouchers need to be part of education reform. There is potential for partnering with local businesses for trade-skill apprenticeship and school credit, as well as Uber for transportation.
BLM wants more localized, community based policing. Whether they are just saying that or know what it means is up for debate, however the rioting is instigating federal take-over of local police and no one is pointing this out. Law Enforcement reform is an important issue for more than just blacks, especially if tackling the large political beauracracy that is disconnected from the officers and the neughborhoods they police.
It’s because of step 3, which is common to other narratives as well, that I don’t support the GOPe’s immigration agenda.
Very interesting history lesson. As a small boy I lived in the Atlanta suburb of Decatur for about 3 years. Of course, at that age, I had no idea what was going on in the city. My only interests were playing in the “crick” that ran next to our house, going to first and second grades, visiting (unfinished) Stone Mountain, learning to ride a bike, and learning to swim at a nearby pool we walked to. Oh yes, and going to the Varsity, usually after church on Sunday!
“What’ll ya have? What’ll ya have?”
They missed Hiram as well, also a lovely little town, but got New Hope Church-Picket’s Mill. Took them a few weeks through. Townsmen managed to get the records out of the Dallas Courthouse and hide them.
Great post.
Sidenote: Sherman won the war with that march. Deal with it.
Thanks Sabr for another interesting story about local politics and governance.
They vanishing into history. They did an anniversry walk for it. It was not right. None of them owned slaves, and they were not members of the elite.
http://civilwarwomenblog.com/exile-of-the-roswell-mill-women/
http://civilwarwomenblog.com/exile-of-the-roswell-mill-women/
Made the Yankee Press even.
Those references are rather suspect. That being said, I do not doubt many non-slaving Southerners were consumed in the conflagration of Sherman’s March. Almost the entire Confederate army, except for officers, was composed of farmers who would never be able to afford a slave. Yet they fought for the prosperity Slavery represented and bought. As for women utterly defiled by War, that is an unfortunate common denominator in all Wars reaching back throughout time.
http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/deportation-roswell-mill-women
http://roadsidegeorgia.com/site/roswell_mill.html
http://www.women-will-howl.com/
These women did not fight anyone, nor own any slaves. And blacks were some of the women rounded up. To write it off as “unfortunate” after saying it is “suspect” is wrong. These women were done wrong, and some of them were children. There was no need for it. It was wrong.