Red-baiting black candidates backfired when Atlanta’s white elite closed ranks

Evidence

Aghast, segregationists on the city’s Democratic Executive Committee contacted the House Un-American Activities Committee, hoping to find dirt on Clement. But when they sought to spread word of Clement’s past membership in left-leaning groups, they found the city’s white elite aligned against them. The newspapers denounced the smear campaign as “dirty politics,” and no less an establishment figure than Hughes Spalding came to Clement’s public defense. With the coalition behind him, Clement beat his white opponent by a margin of roughly 10,000 votes. To the added dismay of segregationists, court rulings forced the Democratic Executive Committee to accept blacks as candidates for its seats. As a result, the largely black Third Ward elected Dr. Miles Amos and Austin Walden as their representatives. — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 98

Categorization

• XREF: Shows segregationist smear tactics (associating black leaders with communism) failing in an early-50s moment, echoing the anti-communist weaponization later normalized in suburban politics. — connects to: Atlanta’s black business elite rivaled the white power structure in cohesion — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 73; Politicians abandon their Black base when courting white voters pays off — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The…, 779; Black leftist candidates received drastically less media coverage than mainstream white candidates. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The…, 1076
• SEED: Contrast this failed red-baiting of a black candidate in 1953 with the successful use of anti-communist and anti-black code-switching in later suburban fights — an essay on when the smear works and when it fails.

Broader Connections

• Black leftist candidates received drastically less media coverage than mainstream white candidates. #qualifies (0.74) — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 1076
• Politicians abandon their Black base when courting white voters pays off #qualifies (0.72) — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 779