Atlanta elites sacrificed segregation customs to protect business progress

Evidence

For Sibley and Woodruff, and the countless others who took their cues from them, personal racism was ultimately much less important than public prestige. As Atlanta’s affluent whites understood, their main concerns—the stability of their city and the success of their businesses—would be damaged by acts of racial extremism. Forced to choose between the social customs of segregation and the economic creed of progress, they readily chose the latter. — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 91

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s larger project of how segregationist ideology retreated and was reinvented - here we see the economic motive for its public abandonment. — connects to: Atlanta’s celebrated moderation masked intense resistance to residential integration — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 19; Historians of Atlanta focused on the moderate power structure and ignored segregationists — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 42; Atlanta’s image of racial moderation was elite economic calculation, not conviction — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 101 (+1 more)
• SEED: Material for an article on how business elites abandoned segregation publicly while holding racist beliefs privately, the split-level racism behind Southern modernization.

Broader Connections

• Atlanta’s image of racial moderation was elite economic calculation, not conviction #corroborates (0.95) — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 101
• Business elites backed racial moderation primarily to protect profits #corroborates (0.93) — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 88