Segregationist homeowners mobilized church congregations whose members also led the defense corporations.

Evidence

Hoping to save their churches, Kirkwood residents rallied around Eastern Atlanta, Inc., a corporation formed to repurchase homes and keep “undesirable neighbors” out of the area. Like other homeowners’ groups, the organization presented a respectable public face. “We don’t have any wild-eyed people in this group,” assured Alderman Robert E. Lee Field, a director in the corporation. “We all live here, we own our homes, we’re church people. We’re just trying to preserve all that.” To fund the neighborhood defense, the group reached out to church leaders, asking them to help save the white neighborhood and, thereby, their own churches. The appeal was a natural one, since several in their congregations already had ties to Eastern Atlanta, Inc. The Sunday school teacher at Kirkwood Baptist acted as the corporation’s treasurer, for instance, while one of Kirkwood Methodist’s stewards served as both a director for Eastern Atlanta and president of the South Kirkwood Civic Club. These overlapping relationships yielded clear results. An October 1960 rally, for instance, featured more than eighty pastors and lay people, representing nine of the fourteen white churches of Kirkwood. B. M. Huggins of the East Atlanta Civic Club reminded the crowd that all the combined church property represented “several millions of dollars in investments,” which could only be protected by keeping Kirkwood white. — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 212

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to how segregationist politics borrowed respectable civic and religious institutional cover, mirroring the pattern seen elsewhere in this book where homeowners’ groups framed defense as preservation rather than bigotry. — connects to: Church leaders framed neighborhood defense as protecting church property values. — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 213; Church, media moguls, and politicians formed a mutually reinforcing segregationist power system — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long: The Legacy of White…, 124; White Catholic priests led local campaigns enforcing residential segregation. — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long: The Legacy of White…, 201 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Church, media moguls, and politicians formed a mutually reinforcing segregationist power system #expands (0.88) — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long, 124
• Church leaders framed neighborhood defense as protecting church property values. #expands (0.83) — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 213
• Business elites organized against labor via church infiltration after World War II #expands (0.79) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1446
• White Catholic priests led local campaigns enforcing residential segregation. #exemplifies (0.78) — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long, 201
• White Christian churches constructed the American project protecting white supremacy #expands (0.76) — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long, 30
• Defense-industry employment gave evangelical congregations material stakes in cold war militarism #qualifies (0.74) — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 99