Atlanta was simultaneously a civil rights center and a segregationist stronghold

Evidence

This is all true. But as Atlanta emerged as the center of civil rights activity, it still remained the site of sustained segregationist resistance. Some of the most brutal incidents of Jim Crow violence occurred inside Atlanta, including a notoriously bloody race riot in 1906 and the infamous lynching of Leo Frank in 1913. In the 1920s and 1930s, the Ku Klux Klan located its national headquarters on prestigious Peachtree Street; after the Second World War, a revived version of the hooded order held its ceremonial rebirth just outside the city’s limits. (One historian of the Klan has gone so far as to anoint Atlanta “its holy city.”) Aside from the several incarnations of that organization, other white supremacist groups have anchored themselves in Atlanta as well, including the country’s first neo-Nazi organization. During the civil rights era, a number of the South’s leading segregationists called Atlanta their home, including Eugene and Herman Talmadge, Marvin Griffin, Calvin Craig, and Lester Maddox. Tellingly, when segregationists waged legal challenges against the 1964 Civil Rights Act, two of the three cases came from Atlanta. — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 41

Categorization

• QUESTION: Two of three legal challenges to the 1964 Civil Rights Act originated in Atlanta — worth chasing which cases and who filed them.
• XREF: connects to: Atlanta’s celebrated moderation masked intense resistance to residential integration — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 19; 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’s traffic congestion results from a deliberate century-long segregation campaign — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project: A New American Origin…, 1194 (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Mutual black-white coalition politics triumphed in Atlanta’s 1953 elections #exemplifies (0.85) — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 98
• Postwar Atlanta’s housing squeeze forced black expansion into white transition neighborhoods #exemplifies (0.82) — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 105
• Atlanta won the 1996 Olympics as a showcase of racial harmony #qualifies (0.80)
• Racial segregation shaped even which side of town held reunions #exemplifies (0.80)
• Atlanta’s traffic congestion results from a deliberate century-long segregation campaign #exemplifies (0.78) — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 1194
• Atlanta’s transit stagnation results from segregation-era road and rail decisions #exemplifies (0.78) — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 1207
• Atlanta’s black business elite rivaled the white power structure in cohesion #qualifies (0.76) — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 73
• Atlanta’s biracial coalition pursued white annexation to prevent a black-majority city #complicates (0.76) — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 93
• The housing crisis devastated black Atlanta before engulfing black America #exemplifies (0.74)