Whites accepted industrial blight to their neighborhoods to keep blacks out

Evidence

In order to cement the dividing line, Southwest Citizens worked behind the scenes with Mayor Hartsfield and the ward’s councilmen, settling on a foolproof plan. … On behalf of Southwest Citizens, Richard Florrid gave them the good news, announcing there would finally be a “barrier” between blacks to the north and whites to the south. … The mayor, he explained over cheers, had agreed to build a six-lane highway along Westview Drive, running from the far side of Ashby Street all the way to Westview Cemetery. … Alongside the highway, Florrid continued, residential lands would be rezoned for light industry and warehouses. … Furthermore, the Atlanta Housing Authority promised to build a five-hundred-unit housing project, for whites only, around the Ashby Street and Sells Avenue intersection. … Ordinarily, middle-class whites would not have welcomed news that their neighborhood would soon be filled with factories, warehouses and public housing. … But the residents of Mozley Park considered these changes a small nuisance when compared with the “threat” of black homeowners. … Together, this line of barriers, coupled with the cemetery and park, would provide an unprecedented “buffer zone” between blacks and whites stretching for miles along the West End. — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 170

Categorization

• XREF: This is a vivid early instance of the pattern the reader is tracking: segregationist pressure reshaped physical space, foreshadowing the later ‘color-blind’ suburban conservatism that would frame such moves in race-neutral terms. — connects to: Facially-neutral rezoning displaces black residents into blight and industrial exposure; White workers cemented segregation to protect their labor advantages — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1459; Early zoning bodies deliberately down-zoned black neighborhoods to industrial status — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up: Environmental…, 362 (+1 more)
• ADDENDUM: The city literally used infrastructure (a highway) as a racial barrier — a direct infrastructural analog to how trees and grafting serve as physical infrastructure in the reader’s trees article, here weaponized for segregation.

Broader Connections

• Early zoning bodies deliberately down-zoned black neighborhoods to industrial status #expands (0.85) — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up, 362
• Residential segregation was conceived as territorial defense of white islands against black encroachment #expands (0.80) — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 115
• Facially-neutral rezoning displaces black residents into blight and industrial exposure #expands (0.78)
• White workers cemented segregation to protect their labor advantages #qualifies (0.72) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1459