Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T20:24:22.047Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Urban Renewal, Public Housing and the Racial Shaping of Atlanta

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 October 2011

Ronald H. Bayor
Ronald H. Bayor
Affiliation:
Georgia Tech
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

A number of American cities experienced urban renewal in the 1950s and 1960s. Historians and others who have chronicled the urban changes of those decades have cited economic redevelopment as the motivating factor in the rebuilding of the downtown and the relocation of the black population from that area. For example, Carl Abbott in his analysis of Sunbelt cities noted that “the rebuilding of downtown districts was intended to secure two related economic goals.” The first was to make the city more appealing as a center of investment and business activity as opposed to competing cities; the second was to enhance the downtown area in light of suburban development which might attract business away from the central city. Clarence Stone-in his study of Atlanta's renewal also indicates the primacy of economic factors as the motivation for rebuilding the city's downtown and uprooting the black population.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Policy History , Volume 1 , Issue 4 , October 1989 , pp. 419 - 439
Copyright
Copyright © The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. 1989

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1. Abbott, Carl,The New Urban America: Growth and Politics in Sunbelt Cities(Chapel Hill, 1981), 144–46Google Scholar; Stone, Clarence N., Economic Growth and Neighborhood Discontent: System Bias in the Urban Renewal Program in Atlanta (Chapel Hill, 1976).Google Scholar

2. Hirsch, Arnold R., Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago, 1940–1960 (Cambridge, 1983)Google Scholar; Silver, Christopher, Twentieth-Century Richmond: Planning, Politics and Race (Knoxville, TN, 1984).Google Scholar

3. “Toward Equal Opportunity in Housing in Atlanta, Georgia—A Report of the Georgia State Advisory Committee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights,” May 1968, 7, Southern Regional Council papers (hereafter cited as SRC), The Atlanta University Center Woodruff Library, Special Collections; Atlanta branch, NAACP, presentation before the Advisory Committee of the United States Civil Rights Commission, 8 April 1967, SRC.

4. The segregation ordinances and racial zoning plans and their effect on Atlanta are covered in: Flint, Barbara J., “Zoning and Residental Segregation: A Social and Physical History, 1910–1940” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago 1977), 135Google Scholar, 207, 212, 239–40, 276, 303, 309, 313, 317, 320, 325–26, 334–36, 341–43, 357; Stephenson, Gilbert T., “The Segregation of the White and Negro Races in Cities,” South Atlantic Quarterly 13 (January 1914), 1–4Google Scholar, 7–10; Dittmer, John, Block Georgia in the Progressive Era, 1900–1920 (Urbana, 1977), 13–15Google Scholar; Roger L. Rice, “Residential Segregation by Law, 1910–1917,” Journal of Southern History 34 (May 1968), 181, 193–94; West, E. Bernard, “Black Atlanta—Struggle for Development, 1915–1925” (M.A. thesis, Atlanta University, 1976), 34–36Google Scholar, Appendix; “The Atlanta Zoning Plan,” Survey 48 (22 April 1922), 114–15; Preston, Howard L., Automobile Age Atlanta: The Making of a Southern Metropolis, 1900–1935 (Athens, GA, 1979), 96Google Scholar; Moore, John Hammond, “Jim Crow in Georgia,” South Atlantic Quarterly 66 (1967), 558Google Scholar; Brownell, Blaine A., “The Commercial-Civic Elite and City Planning in Atlanta, Memphis, and New Orleans in the 1920s,” Journal of Southern History 41 (August 1975), 357Google Scholar, 359, 362, 364; Atlanta Journal, 11 April 1922; Atlanta General Council Minutes, 20 May 1929, 525; 16 March 1931, 518.

5. Preston, Automobile Age Atlanta, 98, 101–3.

6. Atlanta Daily World, 22 October 1948; Statement of Atlanta Urban League presented to Joint Congressional Committee on Housing in Atlanta, 29 October 1947, in SRC.Google Scholar

7. Preston, Automobile Age Atlanta, 106–7; Thompson, Robert A., Lewis, Hylan, and McEntire, David, “Atlanta and Birmingham: A Comparative Study in Negro Housing,” in Studies in Housing and Minority Groups, Glazer, Nathan and McEntire, David, eds. (Berkeley, 1960), 19–20Google Scholar; Crimmins, Timothy J, “Bungalow Suburbs: East and West,” Atlanta Historical Journal 26 (Summer/Fall 1982), 88–89.Google Scholar

8. William B Hartsfield to Clarke Donaldson, 20 March 1954, Atlanta Bureau of Planning papers (hereafter cited as ABP), Atlanta Historical Society. Robert C. Stuart to W. O. Duvall, 19 March 1954, ABP; “Report on the Adamsville Transition Area,” 26 August 1960, ABP; Crimmins, Timothy J., “West End: Metamorphosis from Suburban Town to Intown Neighborhood,” Atlanta Historical Journal 26 (Summer/Fall 1982), 46–47Google Scholar For more on the racial uses of highways and roads, see Bayor, Ronald H., “Roads to Racial Segregation: Atlanta in the Twentieth Century,” Journal of Urban History 15 (November 1988), 3–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9. Lochner, H. W. and Company, and DeLeuw, Cather, and Company, Highway and Transportation Plan for Atlanta, Georgia, Prepared for the State Highway Department of Georgia and the Public Roads Administration, Federal Works Agency (Chicago, January 1946)Google Scholar; Leon Eplan, a city planner and Commissioner of the Department of Budget and Planning from 1974 to 1978, stated that “even the interstate highway system was, as in the case of 1–20 West, used to form a racial wall.” John H. Calhoun noted that 1–20 West was developed as a racial buffer, and L. D. Milton commented that it was supposed to be the racial dividing line, but it did not hold up. Leon Eplan, “Background Paper,” for Metropolitan Atlanta Conference on Equality of Opportunity in Housing, 29 May 1968, SRC; Interview with John H. Calhoun, 7 August 1985; Interview with L. D. Milton, 18 September 1985. Calhoun was active in the founding of the Atlanta Negro Voters League and All- Citizens Registration Committee in the 1940s. He was also a real estate broker and a member of the Empire Real Estate Board, a coalition of black real estate firms; co-chair of the Georgia Voters League; executive director of the Atlanta branch, NAACP, in the 1960s; a city councilman in the 1970s; and a member of the Atlanta Regional Commission. Milton was president of the black-owned Citizen's Trust Bank in Atlanta from 1930 to 1971 and was involved in developing some west-side communities for blacks.

10. Interview with Robert A. Thompson, 17 July 1985; telephone interview, 15 August 1986; interview with Milton; , Thompson, Lewis, , and , McEntire, “Atlanta and Birmingham,” 29, 31, 34; Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 11 October 1959. Thompson was housing secretary and associate director of the Atlanta Urban League from 1942 to the 1960s, secretary of the Atlanta Housing Council, and assistant to the Regional Administrator of HUD for equal opportunity in the late 1960s. He was personally involved in most housing and expansion issues in Atlanta during this period.Google Scholar

11. Interview with Thompson; Interview with Milton; Stephens Mitchell to Robert C. Stuart, 18 February 1954, ABP; Westside Mutual Development Committee and Advisory Panel to Collier Heights resident, 5 March 1954; ABP; Atlanta Journal, 9 December 1952.

12. Atlanta Journal, 17, 19,20, 1962; Allen, Ivan, Jr., with Paul Hemphill, Mayor: Notes on the Sixties (New York, 1971), 71–72; Interview with Ivan Allen, Jr., 29 July 1985.Google Scholar

13. “Atlanta's Fight Against Substandard Housing—Is It Working?” Research Atlanta Report, October 1972, 47, 53, 73.Google Scholar

14. Stone, Economic Growth, 62–63, 97; Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 18 May 1958Google Scholar; The Renewer (Newsletter of the Citizens' Committee for Urban Renewal), August 1963. As of 1968, Atlanta still had separate white and black public-housing application offices and thereby discouraged integration of the public housing. Therefore, the official desegregation of public housing in 1962 had little immediate effect on decreasing housing segregation in public units. See “Toward Equal Opportunity,” 8, 11, 30, 40.

15. Presentation of J. H. Calhoun, representing Atlanta branch, NAACP before Metropolitan Planning Commission Hearings, 30 May 1952, NAACP papers, group II, series C, branch files, 1940–55, Box 38, Library of Congress; L. D. Reddick to W. E. B. DuBois, 6 October 1952, W. E. B. DuBois papers, reel 68 (microfilm edition); remarks of L. D. Reddick at the public hearings, Metropolitan Planning Commission, 26 May 1952, DuBois papers, reel 68; remarks of John Wesley Dobbs at the public hearings, Metropolitan Planning Commission, 3 June 1952, DuBois papers, reel 68.

16. Stone, Economic Growth, 68–71; Atlanta Constitution, 21 February 1960; Atlanta Daily World, 15 May 1960, 19 July 1961, 8 and 10 August 1961; Interview with Cecil Alexander, 17 December 1984. (Alexander was chairman of the Housing Resources Committee from 1966 to 1969, the Citizens Advisory Committee on Urban Renewal in the 1960s, and the Long-Range Planning Committee of the Chamber of Commerce in the 1970s.)

17. Malcolm D. Jones to Hartsfield, 6 May I960, ABP; Thomas M. Parham to Mayor William B. Hartsfield, 11 May 1960, ABP.

18. Turner, Claudia M., “Changing Residential Patterns in Southwest Atlanta from 1960–1970” (M.A. thesis, Atlanta University, 1970), 37–38.Google Scholar In 1961 a one-time exception to the policy of not building public housing on renewal land came after the devastating Egleston rejection, when land had to be found quickly for those displacees who were to be put into the Egleston site housing. A project for elderly blacks (Antoine Graves Homes) was built in the Butler Street renewal area near Grady Homes, adjacent to the CBD on the south, and an addition was made to the Perry Homes project in the northwest. This action was taken because of the dire need for housing and the opposition of white neighborhoods to locating any black projects in their areas. See Stone, Economic Growth, 75–76; Atlanta Daily World, 23 June 1961; Atlanta Constitution, 14 and 22 June 1961.

19. Hunter, Floyd, Community Power Succession (Chapel Hill, 1980), 6Google Scholar, 26; interview with Calhoun; interview with Thompson, 17 July 1985. Atlanta Daily World, 4 June 1958.

20. Interview with Leon Eplan, 15 October 1985; interview with Robert B. Flanagan, 3 December 1985. (Eplan, a city planner, did the feasibility study on the stadium. Flanagan was executive secretary of the Atlanta branch, NAACP, in 1967–68 and later president of the Georgia NAACP.)

21. Stone, Economic Growth, 94–98, 100–101, 108, 110, 113, 177–78.

22. Atlanta branch, NAACP, presentation before the Advisory Committee of the United States Civil Rights Commission, 8 April 1967, SRC; Final Report, City of Atlanta, Georgia, “Equal Opportunity in Housing,” Atlanta Community Improvement Program, 1966–67, Box 1, City of Atlanta, Reports, Atlanta Historical Society.

23. Atlanta branch, NAACP, presentation before the Advisory Committee of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, 8 April 1967, SRC.

24. Flanagan to John M. Flanigen (chairman, zoning committee), 3 November 1967, Cecil Alexander files (privately held). Also, interview with Clarence Coleman, 24 April 1986. (Coleman was the Southern Regional Director of the National Urban League from the mid-1960s to 1972 and prior to that was deputy executive director of the Atlanta Urban League.) Atlanta Daily World, 25 March 1962.

25. “Toward Equal Opportunity,” 8. Samuel Ira Spector, “Municipal and County Zoning in a Changing Urban Environment,” Research paper 53, June 1970, Bureau of Business and Economic Research, Georgia State University, 7.

26. Atlanta Constitution, 8 April 1967; “Toward Equal Opportunity in Housing in Atlanta, Georgia—A Report to the Georgia State Advisory Committee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights,” First Draft, 13 October 1967, 26, SRC.Google Scholar

27. HIrsch, Making the Second Ghetto, 265–66, 268.

28. Stone, Economic Growth, 63–65, 68, 85–87, 142–43.

29. Housing Resources Committee, Minutes, 31 May 1967, in Cecil Alexander files; “Toward Equal Opportunity,” May 1968, 48; Atlanta Constitution, 8 April 1967; Atlanta Joumal-Constitution, 27 August 1967.

30. Atlanta Constitution, 5 and 15 August 1967; Stone, Economic Growth, 144–45; Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 27 August 1967.

31. Weekly Star, 14 September 1967, 16 November 1967; Housing Resources Committee, Minutes, 2 August 1968, in Cecil Alexander files; Atlanta Constitution, 21 April 1967; Council on Human Relations of Greater Atlanta to members of Board of Atlanta Housing Authority, 20 September 1966, in SRC; Atlanta branch, NAACP, “Citywide Housing Conference,” 11 February 1967, in Sam Williams collection, Community Relations Commission Papers, The Atlanta University Center Woodruff Library, Special Collections; Spector, “Municipal and County Zoning,” 7.

32. Edward H. Baxter (Regional Administrator of HUD) to Ivan Allen, Jr., 5 May 1967, SRC.

33. Atlanta Constitution, 13 December 1968; Spector, “Municipal and County Zoning,” 544; Stone, Economic Growth, 146–48.Google Scholar

34. Resolution of Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, 10 April 1968, in Cecil Alexander files; Stone, Economic Growth, 146–50; Housing Resources Committee Minutes, 12 December 1968, in Cecil Alexander files; Atlanta Constitution, 1 December 1967.Google Scholar

35. Atlanta Journal, 19 April 1972; Atlanta Constitution, 20 April 1972.

36. Stone, Economic Growth, 143, 146–47; Malcolm D. Jones (Housing Coordinator) to Frank Carter, 16 August 1968, Cecil Alexander files.

37. Greater Atlanta Council on Human Relations, “Report,” 19 March 1959, SRC.

38. “Techwood Neighorhood,” Report 1: Social Base Map Survey of Atlanta, Georgia, WPA of Georgia, 1939, 7–8; H. A. Gray (Director of Housing, PWA) to K. S. McAllister (Housing Manager, Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works, Housing Division), 19 January 1937; and McAllister to Gray, 22 January 1937, National Archives, RG 196, Records of the Public Housing Administration, Box 32, folder HI 101–4; Leopold Hass and D. L. Stokes to Col. H. B. Hackett (General Manager, Public Works Emergency Housing Corporation), 21 March 1934, National Archives, RG 196, Federal Program Project files, Box 23, folder H—1101; “Memorandum and Report on Techwood and University Housing Projects, Atlanta, Georgia, January 9, 1934,” by N. Max Dunning, Assistant Director of Planning, National Archives, RG 196, Federal Program Project files, Box 23, folder H-1100.

39. Thompson, Lewis, and McEntire, “Atlanta and Birmingham,” 21, 27–32; Greater Atlanta Council on Human Relations, “Report,” 19 March 1959, SRC; Francis X. Servaites (Acting Commissioner, PHA) to A. R. Hanson (Director, Atlanta Regional Office, PHA), 22 October 1965, National Archives, RG 196, Commissioner of Public Housing Correspondence, Box 7, folder, Atlanta Regional Office, Atlanta, 1965.

40. Housing Resources Committee memo, “Report on Vacant Land in Atlanta,” 9 August 1967, SRC.

41. Atlanta branch, NAACP, “Citywide Housing Conference,” 11 February 1967 in Sam Williams collection; Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, Board of Directors, 13 September 1967, in Grace Hamilton papers, The Atlanta University Center Woodruff Library, Special Collections; Allen, Mayor: Notes on the Sixties, 71.

42. Malcolm D. Jones to Mayor and Board of Aldermen, “Year-End Review of Urban Renewal,” 1959, Department of Urban Renewal, Atlanta: (Mimeo) in Charles Palmer papers, Emory University, Special Collections.

43. Hamilton Douglas, Jr., “Housing the Million,” report prepared for a group of Atlanta business leaders, 10 January 1961, SRC.

44. Atlanta Bureau of Planning, “The Story of Negro Housing in Atlanta,” 1965. ABP; Spector, “Municipal and County Zoning,” 5–6; Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 18 May 1958.Google Scholar

45. Spector, “Municipal and County Zoning,” 5, 54; Atlanta Constitution, 8 September 1971.

46. Bayor, Ronald H., “A City Too Busy to Hate: Atlanta's Business Community and Civil Rights,” in Business and Its Environment, Sharlin, Harold, ed. (Westport, CT, 1983).Google Scholar

47. Southern Regional Council, Proposed Immediate Steps on the Immediate Problem: Housing Discrimination and Low-Cost Housing Shortages, n.d., SRC; Adams, Samuel L., “Blueprint for Segregation: A Survey of Atlanta Housing,” New South 22 (Spring 1967), 77.Google Scholar

48. Abbott, New Urban America, 151; “Back to the City: Housing Options for Central Atlanta,” Full Technical Report, Central Area Housing Strategy Study, June 1974 (Study Director, Richard C. D. Fleming of Central Atlanta Progress; Project Coordinator, Frank Keller of Atlanta Department of Planning).

49. “Housing and Negroes in Atlanta, Georgia,” Hearings testimony before U.S. Commission on Civil Rights held in Atlanta, 10 April, 1959, SRC report, 24 June 1959; Samuel Adams, “Blueprint for Segregation,” 74; Hein, Virginia H., “The Image of'‘A City Too Busy to Hate’: Atlanta in the 1960's,” Phybn 33 (Fall 1972), 219Google Scholar; Harris, James W., “This Is Our Home: It is Not for Sale” (Princeton Senior's Thesis, 1971), 35.Google Scholar

50. Final Report, City of Atlanta, Georgia, “Equal Opportunity in Housing,” Appendix I–1; “Toward Equal Opportunity,” May 1968, 4; “The Growth and Extent of Segregation in Housing in the City of Atlanta,” n.d., in Clarence Bacote papers, The Atlanta University Center Woodruff Library, Special Collections.

51. “Toward Equal Opportunity,” May 1968, 10; C. R. Yates to Fulton County Grand Jury, 15 April 1960, in Whitney Young papers, Columbia University; Final Report, City of Atlanta, Georgia, “Equal Opportunity in Housing,” 19; Council on Human Relations of Greater Atlanta to members of the Board of Atlanta Housing Authority, 20 September 1966, National Archives, RG 196, Commissioner of Public Housing Correspondence, Box 7, folder, Housing Assistance Regional Directors, Atlanta, 1966.

52. Atlanta Constitution, 27 December 1987; Preston, Automobile Age Atlanta, 157–58.Google Scholar

53. Adams, , “Blueprint for Segregation,” 78. Atlanta, Department of Budget and Planning, 1980 City of Atlanta Comprehensive Development Plan, vol. 1, August 1979, 48, 54.Google Scholar

54. Atlanta Constitution, 22 July 1987.Google Scholar