Mutual black-white coalition politics triumphed in Atlanta’s 1953 elections

Evidence

Just as black voters supported the larger coalition, so too did the coalition support a black candidate. Dr. Rufus Clement, president of Atlanta University, ran for a spot on the board of education with Hartsfield’s hearty endorsement. … By all accounts, the 1953 elections represented the triumph of coalition politics. Not only had Atlanta returned its moderate mayor to city hall; it had also elected its first black officials since Reconstruction. — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 98

Categorization

• QUESTION: Does this cooperative coalition moment of the early 50s explain why Atlanta’s white defection to the suburbs was especially bitter — the inversion of a genuinely mixed politics?
• XREF: connects to: Atlanta was simultaneously a civil rights center and a segregationist stronghold — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 41; Postwar Atlanta’s desegregation was driven by a white-black moderate coalition, not activists or reactionaries — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 50; Atlanta postwar politics fused racial progressivism with economic growth. — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 52 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Atlanta’s moderate coalition allied blacks with affluent whites against white workers #expands (0.92) — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 100
• The unified black coalition concealed internal inequalities and tensions #complicates (0.82) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 151
• Coalition formation across rival black movements was essential to apartheid’s overthrow #exemplifies (0.78) — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 545
• Resistance to the bans built unprecedented cross-racial coalitions #exemplifies (0.74) — Khaled A. Beydoun, American Islamophobia_ Understanding…, 470