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Minority Outreach on a Small Scale
Downtown Atlanta, circa 1962. Photo credit: Atlanta Time Machine.
Avik Roy’s return to the comments regarding Republican outreach to minorities has occasioned much discussion about how to do outreach to minorities, whether it is possible, how it would work, and much else along those lines. I don’t have an answer, but let me offer a small scale example that illustrates the problem, courtesy of Clarence Stone’s book, Governing Atlanta. And do keep in mind that everyone in this story is a Democrat.
In 1948, Atlanta was a segregated city with a large black middle class. The city was divided into wards, but the local government of Atlanta was rapidly centralizing into the hands of Mayor William Hartsfield. In the later 1930s, the city began to professionalize, moving power away from appointed officials and into a civil service and electing all its aldermen at large, rather than from districts. All of this was driven by the demands of the Chamber of Commerce, specifically the clique that Clarence Stone and Floyd Hunter called the “Downtown Business Elite.” It cost him working class voters who had previously relied on Jim Crow and patronage to provide them jobs and welfare support, but the new reforms placed that power in the hands of the Business Elite.
Mayor Hartsfield had previously been a segregationist — as recently as 1944 — but by 1946 he needed additional political support, and African American leaders offered it on conditions: black police officers. Black voters were kept from the primaries — the elections that actually mattered state and federal — by the White Primary rules, but they could vote in local elections. Black leaders offered a block — The Atlanta Negro Voters League — that would mobilize a quarter of the city in each election.
In return, they got eight black police officers, as well as Hartsfield’s push for state and national civil rights and an agreement to reign in the racist rhetoric in Atlanta. Not a small thing.
The white working class was completely shut out from all this.
The Business Elite continued to get their way on professionalization and reform in the city. They next moved on to the need for giant expressways to connect the surrounding territories to the city’s downtown hub. Atlanta actually had seven or so meaningful downtowns, but the hub was the downtown of the Business Elite, and they wanted the traffic to come straight to them, bypassing the other six.
Doing so, though, would permanently separate black residents from the jobs downtown (unless they had cars) and threatened the smaller white businessmen who located outside the hub. Hartsfield offered the black residents a land swap — relocating them to other parts of the city and bulldozing their homes — and did so by taking the land from working class white residents. Taking the hint, the whites left. Many black residents didn’t like their homes being bulldozed, (and maybe didn’t like getting moved into housing projects either), but they accepted the solution, at first. And the Business Elite got its way, expanding the black neighborhoods into white neighborhoods they opposed — driving out the whites — but never themselves being threatened, much to the irritation of black residents who found themselves held to a tight leash on where and when they could live.
This tension exploded in 1960 when white neighborhoods blocked an attempt to be re-zoned for housing projects. The vote to re-zone failed 9-8, with black leaders finally cutting loose on the Business Elite that had hemmed them in and failed to allow them to expand into another area. While the coalition was eventually restored, it led to a short rebellion by black voters against black leaders who were seen as too close and too deferential to the white Business Elite. Martin Luther King, Sr. was booed by black audiences for his attempts to be “reasonable.”
By 1962, Hartsfield’s 20-year career as mayor were nearly over, and he was soon replaced by Ivan Allen another elite businessman who allied with the black residents of the city against the white working class and the segregationists. At the same time, though, none of the black candidates for office won.
Atlanta had a civil service system that benefited the white Business Elite and, by 1962, black residents wanted real jobs, not token representation. For his part, Allen wanted a football stadium. He created a plan to bulldoze some of the housing authority territory and build that stadium (famously, “for a team that hadn’t signed, with money they didn’t have, on land they didn’t own”) and ejected the black residents. This led to big political fights, and eventually Allen got his way. In return he built a new neighborhood and school, displacing more residents, but residents who weren’t voting for him. And incidentally, all this put put more distance between the city’s black residence and the downtown Business Elite ‘s hub while eliminating some of the competing downtowns.
Displaced blacks rioted. More whites were displaced and left the city for neighboring jurisdictions.
By 1973, so many whites had left or been driven off, that the city was split almost half-and-half black and white; soon after, it became officially black majority. Allen was succeeded in 1969 by Sam Massell (his vice-mayor) in a bruising competition with Maynard Jackson. Jackson was a black attorney who leapt in line — from nobody to mayoral candidate — over the established black leadership who, by this time, had been thoroughly replaced by younger radicals (one of the remaining old-school leaders asked of Jackson, before his run, “Who did he check with?”). To pay off the established black support, Massell created an Office of Affirmative Action and began appointing black residents to every department in the city.
The Civil Service was replaced again by a patronage system and ward elections, but Massell also ditched the moratorium on racial rhetoric, arguing that a black mayor would cause property values in the city to drop. At the same time, he continued to build highways into the city, bulldozing white and black neighborhoods willy-nilly, and further consolidating the city.
In 1973, Jackson won the mayorality by uniting the black and white neighborhood groups that had been ground under by the Business Elite since the 1930s. The old Civil Rights Establishment was rejected, the downtown elites were reduced to a junior partner, and Jackson began what was widely considered a corrupt administration. Corrupt, but honestly corrupt. Jackson handed out patronage on simple terms: Support the city, and you’d receive benefits and protection. The neighborhood communities that had supported Jackson got the relief from the downtown businesses they needed, and they got the jobs and contracts they wanted.
But the Business Elite got what it wanted anyway. They discovered a simple tool under Massell: partnership. Contracts with the city required knowledge of city systems and procedures, but also required a minority (read: black) business owner to get the affirmative action contract. Thus, the white businessmen lent their expertise to black businessmen, who would get the contract and then let the white business subcontract parts of the job, or advise on the whole process for a fee. Though Jackson had thrown out the Business Elite and brought in the people, the Business Elite simply snuck back in the window.
In discussing the situation in 1981, I should disclose that I have a soft spot for Maynard Jackson: He took a city that was dominated by business interests, allied all the residential and neighborhood interests, and threw open the doors of the city to the interests of the voters and not the Chamber of Commerce. While I am not fond of the open corruption, I can understand it: the Business Elite had created the rigged system, and Jackson was just playing the game.
By this point, it was clear that the only winning move was to play exactly as the Business Elite wanted. Jackson was succeeded by Andrew Young, a black minister and protege of Martin Luther King, Jr. Young promptly threw-in with the Business Elite; he had to. The voters who remained in the city were part of a patronage system heavily dependent on partnering with the Business Elite. If you wanted government to work for you, you had to play ball, and Young did. He bulldozed the neighborhoods and brought in not only part of Stone Mountain Expressway but also Presidential Parkway and the Carter Library (built on the land bulldozed for Stone Mountain). By 1988, the city had consolidated from 7 to 3 downtowns, and the Hub was by far the most important. The Business Elite got what it wanted.
This is, incidentally, why I consider Atlanta traffic to be God’s personal vengeance on the city.
Defeated, black and white neighborhood residents fled to neighboring counties -most notably Gwinnett.
*****
Are there lessons to be taken from this story? I’m not entirely sure. What strikes me is that black voters throughout the story are treated horribly: there’s talk about respect, but it’s only enough not to directly insult the voters (and not even always that). When segregationists could use the white working class to keep power, and make way for the business elite, they did. When the white working class stood in the way, they were disposed of quickly and replaced with black voters. Those voters were then kept subordinate, given trinkets and tokens for 20 years, had their lands bulldozed and built over, all because the alternative was the working class segregationists.
But black voters were still treated horribly even after the segregationists disappeared in the 1970s. Even when they became a majority and elected one of their own to lead the city, they were still undercut by the Business Elite. After a short pause, their homes were bulldozed and built over (and I’m skipping over a lot).
Stone noted that the divide actually ran straight through the black community. While the neighborhood associations were getting hammered, the leadership, the businessmen, and the city employees were fine. However, because of the perceived need for solidarity during the 1960s, black voters who did not directly benefit followed their leaders anyway, even as they complained about their leaders selling out. But in the 1970s, when the radicals took over, the Business Elite found it easy to undercut the by offering to share the spoils with people who previously had to go through the black leadership. That is, when the black leadership could no longer deliver in repayment for the elite’s favors, they simply found new people to patronize who could repay. Those who couldn’t were displaced.
This doesn’t mean that the block of minority voters cannot be broken. Jackson came close three times. The Business Elite almost lost their domination twice under Hartsfield and Allen. It also points to exactly how pernicious Affirmative Action really is: binding African Americans to an elite that then uses the set-asides to enrich itself. But it seems much harder to counter these effects than @avikroy lets on.
Published in Politics
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.