Large black populations made southern white resistance less violent but also less successful

Evidence

Unlike northern studies, which uncovered large amounts of “hidden violence” sparked by residential conflicts and chronicled a successful white resistance to racial change, this study demonstrates, almost counterintuitively, that whites in this segregated city were generally less violent in their resistance and less successful than their counterparts in the urban North. The relative failure of racists in Atlanta was not due to their lack of commitment to the cause, but because the black population they challenged was both larger and stronger than those in the North. In terms of percentages, Atlanta’s black population outpaced that of most northern cities: in 1940, for instance, blacks represented 35 percent of Atlanta’s population, but just 8 and 9 percent in Chicago and Detroit, respectively. — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 38

Categorization

• XREF: Gives the reader hard demographic data (35% vs 8-9%) explaining why Atlanta’s resistance differed from the North. — connects to: White southerners largely complied with desegregation once defiance demonstrably failed — Matthew D. Lassiter, The Suburban Origins of “Color-Blind”…, 95; Atlanta whites resisted desegregation less violently than northern whites did — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 38