Is Atlanta the new Black Mecca? With its affordable housing, livable pace and reputation for encouraging entrepreneurship, Atlanta is the "go to" city for enterprising African-Americans

Ebony, March, 2002 by Charles Whitaker

This is the first in a series of articles on African-Americans in major cities with a population of 100,000 or more Blacks. Each article will spotlight leading personalities and institutions, and major attractions. The next article will feature Los Angeles.

NEARLY 25 years ago, when Shirley Franklin, the new mayor of Atlanta, was cutting her political teeth in the administration of Atlanta's first Black mayor, Maynard Jackson, the city that is now considered the crown jewel of the New South was just beginning to shine. For all its cosmopolitan pretensions, Atlanta, pre-Maynard, was a largely provincial town, hemmed in by its insular and racially divided social and political structure and its lack of big-city amenities.

But with the push of the Civil Rights Movement and the leadership of a cadre of Black mayors, Atlanta has undergone an amazing transformation, becoming a booming international metropolis and a magnet for the legions of upwardly mobile, young Black professionals who flock there each year.

Franklin, a Philadelphia native, has had a hand in building the reputation that has made Atlanta the Black mecca it is today. Though her successful campaign for mayor was her first run at public office, her career in government includes stints as Jackson's commissioner of cultural affairs and chief administrative officer in the mayoral administration of Andrew Young. She has guided the development of Hartsfield Airport, the expansion of which played a major role in the growth of Atlanta, and she was a key member of the committee that brought the 1996 Olympic Games to the city, a feat that many--incorrectly --thought Atlanta was poorly equipped to pull off.

Now Franklin stands squarely at the helm. She is the city's first woman mayor. In fact, Atlanta now is the only city with four women in high-profile public jobs. Chief Beverly Harvard leads the police force and Jackie Barrett is the Fulton County Sheriff. Cathy Woolard, who is White and gay, was just elected city council president.

The Atlanta that they lead is a city poised to undergo yet another transformation. White residents are returning to the inner city, reclaiming older neighborhoods and driving up housing costs. The result is a concurrent political shift. Woolard, the first White city council president in over a decade, defeated Michael Bond, son of civil rights activist Julian Bond, for city council president in a runoff that split along racial lines. Some even predict that Franklin may be Atlanta's last Black mayor, a scenario she dismisses.

"I've heard that," she says, "but to me that prediction is short-sighted and a little insulting. It says that people don't believe that there are other smart, young Black people who will come along after me who will have the talent and the broad appeal to be elected. I just don't believe that's the case. My campaign wasn't about race. It was about appealing to people with a message of fair and open and honest government. I'm confident that other Black mayoral candidates will come along after me with a similar message and they, too, will be elected."

At any rate, talented young Black people will be elected to public office in Atlanta, and they will continue to migrate there.

No matter what is happening on the political scene, Atlanta--one of the incubators of the Civil Rights Movement, cradle for a host of historic Black businesses--is still viewed throughout the country as a city teaming with promise and opportunity, especially for young, trained African-Americans. With its hilly, tree-lined enclaves of grand, yet moderately priced (by Northern standards) homes, its historic and galvanizing churches (including some megachurches with congregations approaching 10,000), its cache of esteemed Black colleges and universities, its overlay of Southern gentility and its deceptively easygoing pace, Atlanta has taken on the aura of an African-American haven.

"There is the feeling that if you can't make it in Atlanta, you can't make it anywhere," says former Mayor Andrew Young, who helped spearhead the drive that brought the Olympics to Atlanta. "That's what keeps people coming here--rich people, poor people. They come from all over because they believe that anything is possible in Atlanta."

Though Census figures show that Atlanta's Black population has dipped slightly (it peaked at 282,911 in 1980 and stands at 255,689 today), more than 150,000 African-Americans still moved into the city during the 1990s. The real boom was in the surrounding bedroom communities in DeKalb, Fulton and Cobb counties. More than half a million Blacks swelled the population of those communities in the 1990s. In fact, more Blacks moved to metropolitan Atlanta than to any other metro area in the country during the last decade.

Even in once-segregated strongholds like DeKalb County, which cuts a small swath through the city of Atlanta, Blacks have changed the face of the social and political landscape. In November 2000, DeKalb residents elected 41-year-old Vernon Jones as the county's first Black chief executive. "The times are definitely changing in and around this metropolitan area," Jones maintains. "The whole area is just much more diverse, and that's changing things. There are some glass ceilings, too. We still don't have a Black senator or a Black governor. But the population is growing. More and more Black people are moving here, affluent Black people. That is making a difference."