Carole Merritt, African American Community Building in Atlanta:A Guide to the Study of Race in America

In a sense, the study of race has no geographical limits. The force of racism is global. The specific impact of race, however, will vary nationally and regionally. In the United States, where the presence of Blacks has been significant, power and resources are allocated primarily by race. In the American South where most Blacks have lived and had been central to economic production, racial restrictions have been extreme. But even within the South, there are sub-regional distinctions in the operation of race. References to Upper, Lower, Border, and Deep South imply differences in racial policy and practice that may be largely dependent on variations of geography and economy and on stages of development. And within these sub-regions, state, county and city jurisdictions may vary in the degree to which race dominates law and custom.

This research guide focuses on an urban landscape in the South, where a particular set of political, social, and economic relationships evolved following emancipation. What had been clearly ordered in slavery in an agricultural economy was subverted by freedom in the city. Atlanta is a case study of how these new relationships worked themselves out, how an urban area became the frontier of racial policy in the New South. Atlanta lies in the southwestern end of the urban industrial belt that stretches from Danville, Virginia, through Charlotte, North Carolina, and Greenville, South Carolina, and extends to Birmingham, Alabama. This swath of piedmont plateau at the base of the Appalachian chain supports the geographical and economic framework within which race can fruitfully be studied.

Until recent decades, Atlanta's population, like that of the South, has been almost exclusively Black and White. Moreover, because Black labor and the racial climate tended to discourage large numbers of immigrants, Atlanta's foreign-born population was only 3% at the turn of the century. Race in America, particularly in the South, has tended to override ethnicity. Race and ethnicity, however, overlap. Both terms incorporate ancestry, geographical origins, and cultural traits. By this definition Whites and Blacks belong to ethnic groups as well as to racial groups. In the South they were primarily of British and African ethnicity. There is a critical distinction, however, between race and ethnicity that informs the study of race in America. One's ethnicity, unlike one's race, can change. The acculturation of America's Scotch-Irish, for example, has transcended their ethnicity. But race for the subordinate group is immutable. It is the biological given that generation after generation, in spite of any racial mixture or cultural assimilation, is never dissolved. Black ancestry, however distant or minimal, permanently identifies its descendants as Black. The immutability of Black racial identity is at the core of racism. White supremacy depends upon White racial purity. The absolute standard of White over Black would be subverted and unenforceable were Blacks allowed to breed out of their race.

The South, therefore, is hardly ethnically homogeneous as is often maintained. Only if the African American presence is ignored can one conclude that the South lacks ethnic diversity. Indeed, the South as a region is defined by its diversity, racial and ethnic. The biracial and bi-ethnic character that flows from British and African ancestry has driven the South, its politics, economics, and culture. The Atlanta story tells how American racism rose to new heights with the system of Jim Crow and how that system operated as both constraint and opportunity in the development of the city's African American community

Although the Civil War overturned slavery, another system of racial domination was developed to replace it. Jim Crow, as it came to be called, reached its full flowering in Southern cities like Atlanta by the turn of the twentieth century. In the rural areas, the cotton economy ensured continuities in the control of Black life and labor. But in the city, where there were no such economic continuities, it was necessary to find new ways to secure White supremacy. And in a city like Atlanta where commerce and industry were in their infancy and where Black and White migrants were at times in competition for the same jobs and living space, Black subordination had to be institutionalized in law and custom. Jim Crow legislation reflected the failures of reconstruction as Whites were restored to political power and the controls of slavery were extended. The prohibition of marriage between Whites and Blacks was one of the first pieces of legislation that sought to protect the very heart of White supremacy. Making interracial marriage illegal denied to mixed race children all claims to White property and, more significantly, to White identity. The codes that restricted property ownership and the vagrancy laws that permitted forced labor were other early attempts to maintain the controls of slavery. The White-only primary and the institution of voter qualifications guaranteed Black disfranchisement. Blacks were subjected to racially segregated schools, streetcars, libraries, restaurants and parks. The urban environment created new opportunities for the application of Jim Crow. Atlanta relegated Blacks to separate elevators. The new zoo at Grant Park provided separate entrances, exits and pathways for Blacks and Whites. Atlanta became the first Georgia city to legislate segregation in residential areas. There was virtually no area of Black life that was not restricted by Jim Crow.