Atlanta’s moderate image concealed its status as a center of African American strength

Evidence

For contemporaries, Atlanta always seemed an exception to the segregationist rule, a city that presented a moderate image and contributed much to the civil rights movement. Central figures in the African American struggle for equality, such as W.E.B. Du Bois, James Weldon Johnson, Walter White, Martin Luther King Sr., Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph Abernathy, Whitney Young, Julian Bond, John Lewis, Andrew Young, and Vernon Jordan, all lived inside its limits at one time or another. … There was, perhaps, no clearer source of African American strength in the modern South than Atlanta. — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 40

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Atlanta’s image of racial moderation was elite economic calculation, not conviction — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 101; Atlanta was simultaneously a civil rights center and a segregationist stronghold — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 41; Atlanta’s black business elite rivaled the white power structure in cohesion — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 73 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Atlanta’s image of racial moderation was elite economic calculation, not conviction #expands (0.92) — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 101
• Atlanta was simultaneously a civil rights center and a segregationist stronghold #expands (0.88) — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 41
• Atlanta’s moderate coalition allied blacks with affluent whites against white workers #expands (0.82) — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 100
• Atlanta won the 1996 Olympics as a showcase of racial harmony #exemplifies (0.82)
• Student activists weaponized Atlanta’s progressive image against its own moderates #expands (0.80) — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 415
• Atlanta whites resisted desegregation less violently than northern whites did #expands (0.80) — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 38
• Atlanta’s black business elite rivaled the white power structure in cohesion #expands (0.78) — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 73