Atlanta’s black business elite rivaled the white power structure in cohesion

Evidence

Meanwhile, another group of accomplished professionals—college professors and ministers, contractors and real-estate men, insurance executives and bankers—lived and worked together in the finer black neighborhoods of the city with a sense of community and common purpose quite like that of their white counterparts. The center of their power was the short stretch of black businesses on Auburn Avenue. Many knew the street as “Sweet Auburn” because, as one leader later explained, money was sweet. Indeed, there was an abundance of money in the city’s black community. By 1945 the black-owned businesses of Atlanta could boast of a combined worth nearing $30 million. — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 73

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Atlanta’s moderate image concealed its status as a center of African American strength — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 40; Atlanta was simultaneously a civil rights center and a segregationist stronghold — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 41; Atlanta’s moderate coalition allied blacks with affluent whites against white workers — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 100 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Atlanta’s moderate coalition allied blacks with affluent whites against white workers #expands (0.80) — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 100
• Black petit bourgeois leadership asserted sameness with whites fruitlessly #complicates (0.75)
• Red-baiting black candidates backfired when Atlanta’s white elite closed ranks #complicates (0.72) — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 98