From crackertown to model city?: Urban renewal and community building in Atlanta, 1963-1966

Journal of Urban History

Volumn 35, Issue 3, 2009, Pages 369-386

  Holliman, Irene V ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA   (United States)

Author keywords

African Americans; Atlanta; Housing; Ivan Allen; Model Cities; Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee; Urban renewal

Indexed keywords

BUILDING; CENTRAL BUSINESS DISTRICT; CIVIL RIGHTS; ECONOMIC GROWTH; NEIGHBORHOOD; URBAN HISTORY; URBAN HOUSING; URBAN PLANNING; URBAN RENEWAL;

ATLANTA; GEORGIA; NORTH AMERICA; UNITED STATES;

EID: 60349121022     PISSN: 00961442     EISSN: 15526771     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0096144208330402     Document Type: Article

References (64)

1. See, e.g., Larry Keating, Atlanta: Race, Class, and Urban Expansion (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001), 90, 97; and Clarence Stone, Economic Growth and Neighborhood Discontent: System Bias in the Urban Renewal Program of Atlanta (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1976), 120. Summerhill lies immediately southeast of the central business district, about six blocks south of the state capitol, but the east-west Interstate 20 separated the neighborhood from downtown. Similarly, the Interstate 75/85 "Downtown Connector" ran along the neighborhood's western border and cut Summerhill off from nearby Mechanicsville and Peoplestown.
2. Dick Hebert, "In the Middle of the Mob - The Mayor"; Dick Hebert, Keeler McCartney, Michael Davis, Bill Shipp, and Charles Moore, "Defy Allen, Repulsed by Tear Gas," Atlanta Constitution, September 7, 1966, 1(A).
3. The Summerhill Riot was undoubtedly tame by the riot standards of the mid-1960s; there were no burning city blocks, few looted storefronts, and fewer injuries. The action lasted hours, not days. Even so, it was the most racial violence the city had witnessed in a half-century, and the label riot largely stuck. The mayor, who hailed from the white establishment, referred to the events in Summerhill that September as a riot and devoted an entire chapter of his 1971 memoir to it. Perhaps in laying claim to the same kinds of violence that other American cities were experiencing, Allen could justify his city's need for the same kinds of federal funding to fix the city. On the other hand, Southern Christian Leadership Conference leader Andrew Young, who reached out to Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) protestors and called for a "creative, non-violent force" to work in Atlanta (and who would later serve as Atlanta's mayor from 1981 to 1989), argued that the September 1966 event was just a street disturbance.
4. William B. Hartsfield, mayor of Atlanta from 1937 to 1941 and from 1942 to 1961, coined the phrase "city too busy to hate" in December 1958 in response to the peaceful desegregation of Atlanta public golf courses. The Chamber of Commerce, headed by its president Ivan Allen Jr., adopted the phrase for its 1960 "Forward Atlanta" campaign that encouraged businesses to expand and/or relocate in the city.
5. Ivan Allen Jr. with Paul Hemphill, Mayor, Notes on the Sixties (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1971), 183-84.
6. Their exasperation mirrors that which national civil rights organizations found when they tried to move their campaigns from a rural to an urban theatre. For the contrast between rural and urban civil rights movements, see, e.g., Robert O. Self, American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for postwar Oakland (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003). Urban unrest erupted in cities across the nation after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Acts of 1965 in part because these pieces of legislation seemed unable to rectify serious economic inequality for inner city blacks. To many, it seemed, nonviolent strategies had not fixed, and perhaps would not fix, urban poverty.
7. See, e.g., Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005). In examining the causes and course of white flight in Atlanta, Kruse finds the origins of modern Conservatism in urban politics. I wish to build on Kruse's reappraisal of racial politics in postwar America. Where Kruse focused on whites who were about the politics and business of departing the city, I focus here on the African Americans who remained in the city and who sought improved city services, especially public housing. Also see Matthew D. Lassiter, The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006). Lassiter critiques the "color-blind" language of conservatism. Some affluent and middle-class Atlantans, African American and white, first learned how to use a "color-blind" language to maintain race and class privilege through their experiences with urban renewal.
8. Brian Robick, "Urban Blight and Community Reaction to the Gateway Center Redevelopment Project, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1946-1950" (paper, 2007 Society for American City and Regional Planning History meeting, Portland, ME). Mr. Robick kindly shared a copy of his paper with me.
9. This line of thinking reflected larger national trends, particularly to attract white suburbanites back into the city. See, e.g., Alison Isenberg, Downtown America: A History of the Place and the People Who Made It (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004); Robert M. Fogelson, Downtown: Its Rise and Fall, 1880-1950 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001); Jon Teaford, The Rough Road to Renaissance (Baltimore: John Hopkins University, 1990). For Atlanta's leaders regional growth strategy in the postwar era, see Margaret Pugh O'Mara, Cities of Knowledge: Cold War Science and the search for the next Silicon Valley (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005).
10. Public documents and newspaper reports used Buttermilk Bottom and Buttermilk Bottoms interchangeably. I use the plural form in this text.
11. The Butler Street renewal project commenced in 1959, the year before Ivan Allen was elected mayor.
12. The Central Atlanta Improvement Association (CAIA) represented businessmen from the central business district, and the Uptown Association represented businessmen in the section immediately northeast of the central business district. Both groups were implicitly whites only. The UA in particular fretted about encroachment from nearby African American neighborhoods and repeatedly sought land to expand commercially. The CAIA represented fewer properties near residential areas and worried less about property value decline and more about how to maintain white suburban shoppers.
13. Joseph Gross, "A Survey of Housing Needs for the City of Atlanta," prepared for the Urban Renewal Department of the City of Atlanta, 1958, Atlanta Bureau of Planning Papers, Atlanta Historical Society.
14. Central Atlanta Newsletter, June 13, 1963, City of Atlanta Department of Planning and Development Papers, box 6, folder 4, Atlanta Historical Society.
15. Stone, Economic Growth and Neighborhood Discontent, 95.
16. "Egleston Hospital Land Up for Housing Vote," Atlanta Constitution, May 31, 1961.
17. Stone, Economic Growth and Neighborhood Discontent, 95.
18. The Rawson-Washington project, as was the case with most urban renewal projects, was named for a major intersection within the site boundaries rather than a neighborhood. Rawson-Washington roughly comprised portions of the Summerhill, Mechanicsville, and Peoplestown neighborhoods. All were blocks south of the central business district. Mechanicsville and Peoplestown were west of Interstate 20 and cut off from Summerhill. An eastern portion of the project, as is explained later, was reserved for stadium construction. Interstate construction developed acreage in the middle. Ironically, the Atlanta Housing Authority selected McDaniel Street within the Rawson-Washington project as the site for future public housing, where Mayor Hartsfield, city aldermen, and the Urban League had attempted to test urban renewal on McDaniel as far back as 1951. By 1966, construction crews had completed the civic center auditorium, but the McDaniel Glenn Homes did not open their doors until November 1968; for opening dates and occupancy capacities of public housing, see www.atlantahousingauthority.org.
19. Stone Economic, Growth and Neighborhood Discontent, 99.
20. The Atlanta Housing Authority reasoned that as long as existing public housing projects had vacancies, it would not have to build any more units. In 1963, there were some available units in existing housing projects, but they did not necessarily meet the size or location requirements of families in need. Moreover, vacancies in white public housing projects were not available to black families.
21. The city established its urban renewal committee in 1957 while planning the first three projects. It was streamlined into the city planning and development department in late 1964. Malcolm Jones then directed housing code enforcement before heading the Housing Resources Committee in late 1966.
22. Malcolm Jones, Memo to Urban Renewal Committee members, October 9, 1963, City of Atlanta, Bureau of Planning Papers, box 6, folder 14, Atlanta Historical Society.
23. "Early Land Acquisition" was a procedure whereby officials acquired a site for redevelopment before the entire project area has been officially brought into the execution phase of urban renewal. From Stone, Economic Growth and Neighborhood Discontent, 235. For the April 1964 date and others, see Siân Llewellyn, "An Analysis of Development in the Bedford Pine Neighborhood, 1960-1998" (unpublished paper, City Planning Program, Georgia Institute of Technology, College of Architecture, 1998), 8, in author's possession. 23. Stone, Economic Growth and Neighborhood Discontent, 235.
24. Allen, Mayor, Notes on the Sixties, 156.
25. "Atlanta Seeks 11th Renewal," Atlanta Constitution, July 23, 1965. Summerhill was not included in the Rawson-Washington project, but its neighborhood borders shrank and it lost some property for the creation of a stadium parking lot in 1966. It was included in the Model Cities program as well as the Empowerment Zone, which began in 1995.
26. In spite of the fact that public housing was federally funded, it was racially segregated in Atlanta through 1963.
27. "Segregation Termed Main Problem of Urban Renewal," Atlanta Daily World, June 14, 1961.
28. Allen, Mayor, Notes on the Sixties, 158; Bill Shipp, "The Miracle that Is Now the Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium," Atlanta Constitution, January 6, 1969; Larry Keating, Atlanta: Race, Class, and Urban Expansion, 96-100; Ronald H. Bayor, Race and the Shaping of Twentieth Century Atlanta (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 74. The Milwaukee Braves would not file a motion with their local court system to approve their move to Atlanta until July 1965, after Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium was completed.
29. Keating, Atlanta: Race, Class, and Urban Expansion, 96-100.
30. Ibid.
31. "Hill School Must Go, Allen Says," Atlanta Journal, April 13, 1965; Stone, Economic Growth and Neighborhood Discontent, 102-6.
32. Ibid., 102-6.
33. Ibid.
34. Ibid.; Llewellyn, "An Analysis," 8. Llewellyn calculates the total renewal area as 278 acres. Though it is not clear, it seems that Llewellyn includes the Buttermilk Bottoms acreage in his figure. Ironically, Bedford Street (and side street, Forrest) were named for Confederate soldier Nathan Bedford Forrest, who later established the Ku Klux Klan. The Bedford Pine area, according to the 1960 census, was 98 percent black.
35. "Atlanta Seeks 11th Renewal"; "Bedford Pine Project Offers a Chance to Stress Rehabilitation over Removal," Atlanta Constitution, December 9, 1965.
36. "Bedford Pine Project Offers a Chance to Stress Rehabilitation over Removal"; Llewellyn, "An Analysis," 8.
37. "Atlanta Seeks 11th Renewal." By March 1966, because of overlap, the Buttermilk Bottoms-Boulevard General Neighborhood Renewal Plan was terminated. See "Environmental Impact Statement for Portions of the Bedford Pine Area, 1979," University of Georgia Library, Georgia Room Vertical Subject Files, Urban Renewal.
38. Reverend J. D. Grier, "Resolution," presented at U-Rescue meeting, December 1965, Atlanta-Fulton County Public Library clipping file; Stone, Economic Growth and Neighborhood Discontent, 107-12.
39. "Bedford Pine Project Offers a Chance to Stress Rehabilitation over Removal." Federal Urban Renewal policy technically required that cities provide replacement housing for that which was torn down, but it had not been able to enforce the ruling.
40. Atlanta's Workable Program, 1965, "Declaration of Policy," quoted in Stone, Economic Growth and Neighborhood Discontent, 128.
41. Ted Simmons and Remer Tyson, "Owners of Atlanta's Worst Slums Get Blanket Exemption from Code," Atlanta Constitution, July 28, 1965, 1(A).
42. This federal program, established in 1964 during the Johnson administration, marked the first significant modification to urban renewal. It was designed to increase citizen participation and planning and placed more emphasis on antipoverty objectives. Atlanta city officials, business leaders, and neighborhood organizations continued to use the term urban renewal well after 1964.
43. Bill Shipp, "We Do Not Have Large Areas of Poverty," Atlanta Constitution, September 3, 1965.
44. Gene Simmons, "Urban Renewal 'Human Problems' Discussed by Atlanta Advisory Unit," Atlanta Times, November 20, 1964.
45. Ted Simmons and Remer Tyson, "Is Renewal Good or Bad? The Argument Goes On," Atlanta Constitution, July 29, 1965.
46. Bill Shipp, "King Says Slum here Is the Worst He's Seen," Atlanta Constitution, February 1, 1966, 1(A).
47. Walker Lundy, "Allen Moves to Aid City Slum Dwellers," Atlanta Journal, February 1, 1966, 1(A).
48. Bill Shipp, "Slum Dwellers Violating City Law," Atlanta Constitution, February 2, 1966, 1(A).
49. Bill Shipp, "Tenants Open Rent Strike in War on Markham Slums," Atlanta Constitution, February 5, 1966, 1(A). Julian Bond, information director for SNCC, was also a newly elected state representative for the district, and he proposed renewal plans for Vine City following the media coverage.
50. "City's Shame in Shadow of Its Pride: Atlanta's Plush Stadium Towers over Slum's Poor," Atlanta Constitution, March 18, 1966. The Atlanta Area Community Council compiled much of the information for the "Housing: People, Poverty, and Profits" series that ran in the two main Atlanta papers in July 1965. The articles reprinted a portion of the Community Council's report.
51. Stone, Economic Growth and Neighborhood Discontent, 124-26.
52. Council on Human Relations of Greater Atlanta, news release, September 8, 1966, Southern Regional Council Papers, Atlanta University Center, Robert W. Woodruff Library, quoted in Bayor, Race and the Shaping of Twentieth Century Atlanta, 140.
53. The city placed the neighborhood playground on a tiny patch of grass in the middle of the stadium parking lot. It was an awkwardly chosen site, hardly within walking distance for many Summerhill children, who, during baseball season, had to weave through lanes upon lanes of cars and watch for traffic to reach the merry-go-round. As a consequence of its location, the playground got more use from vagrants and junkies than from children.
54. The Southern Regional Council was founded in 1919 as the Commission on Interracial Cooperation. The organization has sought to eradicate racial injustice in the South, and it became well known for its reports on conditions in the South.
55. Council on Human Relations of Greater Atlanta, news release, September 8, 1966, Southern Regional Council Papers, Atlanta University Center; Bayor, Race and the Shaping of Twentieth Century Atlanta, 140.
56. Bill Shipp, Dick Hebert, Charles Moore, and Michael Davis, "Fire Bombs Exploded in Boulevard Violence: Allen Posts Reward in Slaying," Atlanta Constitution, September 12, 1966, 1(A).
57. Ibid.; Douglas E. Wendell, "The Use of Temporary Mobile and Modular Housing in Urban Renewal Programs" (master's thesis, Georgia Institute of Technology, 1974), 2, 82, quoted in Keating, Atlanta: Race, Class, and Urban Expansion, 106.
58. Ibid.
59. Stone, Economic Growth and Neighborhood Discontent, 128-29; Collier Gladin, The Renewer: Newsletter of the Citizens Advisory Committee for Urban Renewal 4, no. 10 (November 1966), WBH Papers, box 40, folder 12, Emory University, Robert W. Woodruff Library, Special Collections.
60. Ibid.
61. There were four black neighborhoods - Summerhill, Peoplestown, Mechanicsville, and Pittsburg - and two white neighborhoods - Adair Park, and Grant Park.
62. Collier Gladin, The Renewer.
63. Excerpts from "The Physical Environment of Atlanta," November 29, 1966, "The People of Atlanta," December 6, 1966, and "Atlanta's Urban Economy," December 13, 1966, workshop presentations of the Community Improvement Program, found in Newsweek Papers, box 1, Emory University, Robert W. Woodruff Library, Special Collections.
64. Minutes, Urban Renewal Policy Committee meeting, October 14, 1966, Rodney Cook Papers, series II, box 2, folder 1, Richard Russell Library, University of Georgia.