Atlanta: gone with the winds of change

Ebony, August, 1989 by Renee D. Turner

ATLANTA Gone With The Winds Of Change

AIR travelers to Atlanta witness a spectacle that bolsters the city's image as the jewel of the New South and a showcase of Black achievement. Airplanes fly over fields of emerald pines that encircle a bustling metropolis run by Black politicians. They glide over some of the $300,000 homes of the Black elite, and land on runways built by Black firms before depositing passengers at a high-tech airport that some call America's greatest monument to affirmative action.

A quarter-century after the signing of the Civil Rights Act, the city that was the setting for Margaret Mitchell's famed Civil War novel, Gone With The Wind, is a city that the book's heroine, Scarlett O'Hara, would not recognize. Gone with the winds of change are the Jim Crow-era "Whites Only" signs, segregated lunch counters, and laws that prevented Blacks from voting.

Today, Atlanta is the benchmark of Black political and economic success--a mecca for Blacks seeking and often finding fulfillment of the American dream. Blacks and Whites exercise and network at the Downtown Athletic Club. Everything from T-shirts to coffee mugs bearing the logo of Underground Atlanta, the city's new downtown $142 million retail and entertainment attraction, are produced by a Black-owned firm, the Logo Depot. The city of nearly a half-million people is run by its second Black mayor. In fact, African-Americans, who comprise almost 70 percent of the city's residents, hold the majority of city council and county commission seats.

"Atlanta is a town that is comfortable with its multi-raciality," says Mayor Andrew Young. "It works for at least 70 percent of the population, Black and White," he says, acknowledging that at least 27 percent of the city's families live in poverty, and that many of them are unskilled workers from the rural South and industrial North who flocked to the city seeking opportunities in the sophisticated service market. "We must make an effort to include the excluded," he says.

Atlanta's business and professional opportunities over the last two decades also have attracted droves of middle-class Blacks. Kevin Stacia came to Atlanta in 1980 to attend graduate school at Atlanta University, and stayed despite the city's tough duespaying system in which the key to finding job opportunities is networking through groups such as the Atlanta Exchange, an umbrella organization of Black professional groups.

"Atlanta has a progressive business environment, but maintains that Southern hospitality," says Stacia, a Baton Rouge, La., native who is senior personnel representative for Hewlett-Packard's Atlanta sales office.

Integration has apparently been good for the White business community, too. In the 1970s, many firms were attracted to Atlanta not only because of the old railroad hub's regional transportation features and relatively union-free labor environment, but also because of its racial progressiveness. Since then, Atlanta has become the third-most-popular convention spot, has attracted $52 billion in new investment, and has earned the reputation as the city in which the nation's corporate leaders most enjoy doing business.

"The city's political and civic leaders have shown good foresight," says T. Marshall Hahn, board chairman of Georgia Pacific Corp. The forestry products firm has experienced a $3.1 billion sales growth since relocating to Atlanta from Portland in 1983.

Black city leaders use political might to counter White economic dominance. The economic versus political power struggle was most recently played out over the issue of building a $210 million domed stadium in a poor Black downtown neighborhood. Atlanta political leaders held up approval of a 1 cent hotel tax increase that would fund the stadium's construction until they got assurances from its state and corporate planners that a trust fund would be set up for the relocation of displaced residents, and that Blacks would be involved in the stadium planning, building and operation.

"We've made it clear to the business community that in order to get development projects approved, they must do business fairly with Blacks in general," says Rodney Strong, the city's contract compliance officer.

While on the surface Atlanta gleams as a beacon of racial harmony and Black progress in the booming Sun Belt, observers say there also are undercurrents of racism and hopelessness. Federal officials are investigating discriminatory mortgage lending practices. And it was only this year that millionaire Herman Russell became the first Black Atlantan invited to join an exclusive local country club, the Capital City Club.

Atlanta has fulfilled the dream of prosperity for many Blacks, but for others it remains a harsh enclave of unrequited promise. The 30 percent growth of Atlanta's middle-class surpassed that of Chicago, New York and Detroit in the two decades prior to 1980. But the number of poor has grown just as dramatically. Atlanta's crime rate -- which police tie to an increase in drug traffic and despair--is the second highest in the nation.