Racial politics run deep in Atlanta
The controversy over the racial memo in the Atlanta mayor’s race includes contentions that race is no longer, or should no longer, be a factor in local elections.
Race has always been and remains a factor in Atlanta politics — sometimes more overt; other times more subtle.
Overtly, at the close of Reconstruction in the 1880s, Southern states and cities began to move quickly to restrict African-American voting.
In Atlanta, up to 1946, African Americans could vote only in general and special elections. They were excluded from the white primary, which was the only voting that mattered since the Democratic Party reigned in a one-party state.
Once Atlanta blacks got the ballot as a result of Supreme Court decisions, they became the balance of power in local elections for mayor after 1949. Moderate mayors, from William B. Hartsfield in the 1940s and ’50s to Ivan Allen Jr. in the 1960s and ’70s, owed their elections to a unique combination of upper-income white voters and a solidly cast bloc of black votes.
Still, just a year after his election on the strength of the black vote in 1961, Allen sided with whites who were trying to prevent blacks from moving into Cascade Heights.
Allen redeemed himself, in part, by testifying in favor of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The coalition was shattered in 1969 when upper-income whites favored businessman Rodney Cook for mayor, while blacks, in a new coalition with labor and Jews, elected Vice Mayor Sam Massell as Atlanta’s first Jewish mayor.
Massell made some strides toward increasing black employment in city government, but soon broke a strike of mostly black garbage workers and purged black councilmen from committee chairmanships. Perhaps his most grievous affront to black Atlanta was his retention of and support of police chief John Inman, who many blacks saw as a supporter of police brutality.
Massell was defeated by African American Vice Mayor Maynard Jackson in 1973 on the strength of a massive turnout of black voters. Afterwards, many black voters concluded that their interests could not be trusted to a white mayor.
As the city’s first black mayor, Jackson received about 20 percent of white votes and about 30 percent of those votes in his reelection campaign. His first term was tumultuous, with the white business community accusing him of favoring blacks through his appointments and his affirmative action programs, particularly at the new Atlanta airport.
As tensions between the downtown white power structure grew, the Atlanta newspapers declared that the city was “in crisis.” The white business community and Jackson eventually reached peace, as both realized that the flap could hurt the economic health of the city.
In 1981, former U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young ran to succeed Jackson. Young suggested that his style would be different from Jackson’s and that he would work closely with the white business community.
Still, that group’s support went largely to former state Rep. Sidney Marcus. Young won on the strength of a huge turnout of black voters. Former Mayor Jackson campaigned hard for Young and derided Marcus’ black supporters by calling them “grinning, shuffling Negroes.”
Even after one term as a pro-business mayor and with increased support from whites, a little-known white candidate captured most of the white vote in Young’s 1985 re-election.
After Young left office in 1990, Jackson returned for a mostly lackluster third term. The next two black mayors, Bill Campbell and Shirley Franklin, did not draw significant white opposition. Thus, upper-income whites generally supported the candidates whom they viewed as more inclusive and less racialist.
Historically, it should come as no surprise that racism and racialism exist in the current mayor’s campaign. Throughout the period of black domination of city hall, most whites have not been fully supportive of black candidates for mayor when there was a white opponent. And some black groups have continued to espouse a black agenda and urge votes for those backing it.
Alton Hornsby Jr. , the Fuller E. Callaway Professor of History at Morehouse College, is the author of “Black Power in Dixie: A Political History of African Americans in Atlanta.”
