Trouble the Land:
The City Too Busy to Hate

Editor's note: This work contains the use of a racial slur spoken by a white person. The transcript and audio includes the term uncensored as part of a narrative account of racist rhetoric leveled at Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Readers are encouraged to engage with this material at their own discretion and comfort level.

The City Too Busy to Hate

Maynard Jackson: The white power structure, however, in Atlanta was more pragmatic than any other city in the South. It may not have wanted to make these adjustments and to go through this evolutionary process of recognizing to some degree rights of African Americans, but it was good for business to do so.  

Charles McDew: They wanted to make that money, and you couldn't make that money being sort of a North American continent's Pretoria. If Atlanta was going to be the center, it had to make the change.  

(0:38) Narrator: Over a century ago, as the South rose from the ashes of the Civil War, Atlanta Constitution editor Henry Grady declared in a famous speech that his city would champion a new approach to race relations—placing "business above politics."  

Actor reads quote from Henry Grady: There was a South of slavery and secession—that South is dead. There is a South of union and freedom—that South, thank God, is living, breathing, growing every hour.  

(1:08) Narrator: When Grady proclaimed a New South, he coined a phrase and cast an image that Atlanta would promote for decades to come.  

By the early 1960s, growing Black demands to abandon the "Old South" ways of racial segregation would challenge the city's image as the capital of a "New South"—divorced from the legacies of slavery. 

NAACP leader Lonnie King: 

Lonnie King: Historically, Atlanta and Birmingham have been competitors for what is going to be the leading city in the South. Birmingham is probably more strategically located, but Birmingham ducked its head in the sand on issues—and Atlanta was willing to say that, "We were the city too busy to hate." It was a code word for saying that it was progressive.  

Former mayor Andrew Young: 

Andrew Young: Now we were a city too busy to hate because race-hatred stopped investment, and we were just beginning to build an airport. We were just beginning to experience the benefits of this magnificent highway system that comes through our city, and we couldn't afford racial turmoil.  

Former mayor Maynard Jackson: 

Maynard Jackson: So the Atlanta style evolved and that is we're gonna sit down to the bargaining table, cut a deal. I, the white power structure leader, may be gritting my teeth all the time, right? I may be holding my nose theoretically. This is not medicine I want to take, but if it's good for business and good for Atlanta, I'll go through that.  

(2:54) Narrator: The efforts to avoid racial turmoil were guided by a small group of influential white businessmen. In 1950, sociologist Floyd Hunter coined the term "power structure" to describe the close-knit clique.  

George Goodwin, a self-described "leg man" for the group: 

George Goodwin: The power structure was composed of the heads of the utilities, the four or five then largest banks, the three large department stores, and the larger Atlanta based companies: Ivan Allen, Life of Georgia, later Delta, Lockheed. We'll get to Coca-Cola in a minute.  

(3:44) Narrator: Businessman and former mayor Ivan Allen, Jr. described the city's power structure in his autobiography, Mayor: Notes from the Sixties.  

Actor reads quote from Ivan Allen, Jr.: Almost all of us had been born and raised within a mile or two of each other in Atlanta. We were white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, Atlantan, business-oriented, non-political, moderate, well-bred, well-educated, pragmatic and dedicated to the betterment of Atlanta as much as a Boy Scout troop is dedicated to fresh milk and clean air.

Former mayor, Sam Massell: 

Sam Massell: They pretty much were partners—equal partners, to whoever was elected. I'm not saying they made the decisions but boy, they sure played a pivotal role in all decisions that were made. They controlled the votes also. They controlled the media. That was the opinion makers. They controlled the money to pay for the campaign.  

(4:41) Narrator: In Atlanta's drive to succeed as a business center, the city constantly fashioned and refashioned its slogans and image. Mindful of the devastating, negative publicity that cities like Little Rock experienced in the wake of racial violence, Atlanta mayor William B. Hartsfield polished and projected the slogan, "Atlanta, a city too busy to hate."  

Speech by William B. Hartsfield: You have seen with your own eyes other southern cities falter in growth on account of their bad race relations. These are the cities that are famous for bad race relations, have no great building programs. Trade, industry and business is not coming their way. On the other hand, it is coming to Atlanta, a city that calmly says to the world, "We are too busy to hate anybody."  

Atlanta University professor Carl Holman: 

Carl Holman: It's a phrase that certainly has brought billions into this town because people don't like to do business in places where there's tension and strife.  

(5:51) Narrator: The slogan suggested a city busy working towards racial harmony. In reality, Atlanta promoted good public relations more than good human relations.  

Speech by William B. Hartsfield: We have learned that racial violence sooner or later affects the cash register as well as the general welfare of our people.  

Carl Holman: Hartsfield's "city too busy to hate" was I guess about 30 percent true and 70 percent cosmetic.  

Lonnie King: They marketed this slogan about them being "too busy to hate." And what they really should have been saying was that they were too busy to hate outwardly, and let it be seen. They were doing a whole lot of hating behind the scenes.  

Narrator: Connie Curry, a future city department manager, and Frank Smith, future Washington DC city council member recall the everyday reality of Atlanta in the early 1960s.  

Connie Curry: I hated that image so much of "the city too busy to hate," because I remember being afraid and scared and seeing a side of it that didn't jive with this PR image.  

My car was painted. I had a Karmen Ghia, a little red and white car, and the Klan came by and painted blue on it and then painted KKK on the side of it.  

Frank Smith: I went to Southern Bell Telephone Company in downtown Atlanta to apply for a job to be one of those guys that climb the poles to fix the—and I remember this very well because they wouldn't give me an application.  

They said, "Look, there's no need for you to have this. We don't let people like you do jobs like this." She said, "I don't know why you want to fill it out. We're not going to hire you anyway." They wouldn't even let us fill out the job applications.  

(7:51) Narrator: In an effort to accommodate the rising expectations of the Black community, Atlanta's power structure opened the door—if only a crack—to a few older Black leaders who worked with them behind the scenes.  

Activist Stanley Wise: 

Stanley Wise: The white community in its infinite wisdom and planning would make room for Blacks at certain levels. Particularly, that business class who doesn't make waves but makes money.  

(8:18) Narrator: NAACP leader Jondelle Johnson: 

Jondelle Johnson: Colonel Walden and Cochrane and those preachers and them—they were the ones that they chose to come down there and talk to them and talk about our problems and what we wanted. Made deals, y'know on what's gonna happen in the Black community.  

Charles Black: They felt they were a part of the power structure in that sense. They had the private number to the mayor's office; you see where they could call after five o'clock. And this was, this was big.  

Stanley Wise: I mean, that's sort of how they sort of kept it in tune.  

(8:55) Narrator: To maintain racial order, Atlanta's power structure had to both contain Black protest and keep white extremists out of City Hall. In 1961, the city's business leaders and their Black counterparts worked together to elect moderate businessman Ivan Allen.  

George Goodwin: When Mayor Hartsfield decided in 1961 that he would not stand for re-election, Mr. Robinson, chairman of First National, had heard about it about noon. He said, "How about spending this afternoon on Auburn Avenue? Talk to the Black businesspeople and Black professional people that you know down there and see who they want as the successor to Mayor Hartsfield." That was pretty damn wise, that the nomination should come from the Black community. And I did. And I talked to ten or twelve people—Mr. Walden, Mr. Yates, Mr. Milton, Warren Cochrane, and some of the ministers: Dr. Borders, Daddy King, and they were almost but not quite unanimous in their feeling that Ivan Allen, Jr. should be the one considered. And so I came back and reported to Mr. Robinson, and he called up some of his friends and said, "I understand the Black community wants Ivan. Let's go."  

(10:24) Narrator: Ivan Allen was elected on the strength of a coalition of business-oriented whites, social liberals, and Black voters. The new mayor moved quickly to polish Atlanta's "New South" image, while doing little to assist racial desegregation in the city.  

Patricia LaHatte: Then when Mayor Ivan Allen was elected, he resurrected his father's concept of Forward Atlanta. And that was to have major corporations pool their money in a common kitty.  

I think the coup was that the corporations put the money where their mouth was. That "if it is good for Atlanta, it's gonna be good for us."  

George Goodwin: Our objective was set forth: to try to produce ten thousand new jobs a year—and the first year we had eighteen thousand, the next year twenty, twenty-five thousand.  

Patricia LaHatte: So the main drive of the Chamber of Commerce was to beat New Orleans and Birmingham to the magic figure of one million because when a city got to be one million, this opened up all sorts of avenues of advertising and promotion and sales and things of that sort.  

George Goodwin: You wouldn't believe the amount of coverage in full page and double page things—Reader's Digest, Saturday Evening Post, Life, Look—all those magazines—not once but many times.  

(12:01) Narrator: In December 1962, the favorable publicity was offset by an incident which incensed Atlanta's Black community and embarrassed the city.  

Attorney Marjorie Pitt-Hames: 

Marjorie Pitt-Hames: A group people, of Black businessmen, bought an already existing subdivision, and I believe it was called Peyton Hills, I'm not sure, but it’s out off Peyton Road. And Ivan Allen, the mayor at that time, built a barrier across the road to prohibit Black people from entering, going through a white community to get to this subdivision.  

George Goodwin: Somehow the city government of Atlanta thought all you had to do was build a wall and that would stop the movement. It did (laughing) for one week. (Laughing) Then the ridiculousness of it set in.  

Carl Holman: He built that wall which later came to be called the "Berlin Wall." And gave national negative attention to Atlanta—which Atlanta never likes.  

George Goodwin: It happened. It really did. We all looked back on it and said, "How in the world did we manage to do that?" 

Marjorie Pitt-Hames: Ivan Allen's photograph got sent all over the country in the newspapers with him standing out there by that barrier. 

Carl Holman: And Hartsfield was asked to comment on it, he says, "Well it's not easy to be mayor of a city like this," he says, "but I made a lot of mistakes in my time, but I never made one you could take a picture of." 

(13:39) Narrator: In December 1964, another crisis threatened Atlanta's image. Atlanta native son, Martin Luther King Jr., the drum major of the civil rights movement, had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace.  

Speech by Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.: I do not consider this merely an honor to me personally, but a tribute to the disciplined, wise restraint, and majestic courage of the millions of gallant Negroes and white persons of good will who have followed a nonviolent course in seeking to establish the reign of justice and the rule of love across this nation of ours.  

(14:21) Narrator: Would white Atlanta honor the man whom most whites in the city and the South considered a modern-day Lucifer?  

Black business leader Jesse Hill: 

Jesse Hill, Jr.: That was quite controversial. I think on looking back, you wonder why it was so controversial. The city should have been proud, but there were detractors for the dinner and there were threats for the dinner, and there was heightened security.  

George Goodwin: They picked the site—the old Ansley Hotel. Ticket sales wasn't going very well.  

Janice Rothschild: It's hard to believe that people in 1964 didn't really believe that there could be a successful dinner held interracially in the city of Atlanta. And these people, whom I call the power structure because that was the term they used then, but the financial moguls of the city were not bad people, but they honestly did not believe that they could pull it off.  

George Goodwin: The white power structure wasn't quite ready.  

(15:33) Narrator: Many Atlanta businessmen resented paying tribute to the civil rights leader. King had recently joined a picket line of striking Black workers at Atlanta's Scripto firm.  

Former U.S. Congressman James MacKay: 

James Mackay: The bankers around town were saying, "The hell with this damn nigger, he's up there saying to strike even though the federal judges told him you can't do that." And said, "He's an anarchist, and we can't be out here honoring him. Doesn't matter what those damned people did over there in Scandinavia—we don't even know who they are anyway."  

I mean this was the wrenching thing that—here's a fellow that had just been irritating, causing trouble, you know, marching in the street and all that, causing people to bomb him, you know. I mean it was all Martin Luther King's fault and having a big dinner for him, you know, this just was crazy.  

(16:23) Narrator: Then, Coca-Cola president Robert Woodruff—the effective leader of the city's power structure, stepped forward.  

George Goodwin: Mr. Woodruff indicated that the Coca-Cola Company would be taking some tables and tables began to sell like hot cakes. Again, a situation where people followed respected leadership.  

(16:50) Narrator: Despite the tensions, the King dinner drew 1,500 participants. Time magazine called the interracial event "remarkable, even for Atlanta."  

James MacKay: And so anyway, it was a howling success, and this is another funny thing. You know this as a child or parent—you kick somebody into doing the right thing. And it's such a pleasure to do the right thing, you just feel real good about yourself.  

(17:16) Narrator: In 1965, after decades of neglect, urban America exploded. Atlanta's image for racial progress was no match for the reality of growing frustration and violence in its own poor neighborhoods. In September '66, violence broke out in the city's Summerhill section.  

Summerhill resident Ethel Mathews: 

Ethel Mathews: When Mayor Ivan Allen was the mayor, you know SNCC was in operation then. I lived right up there at 969 Capitol Avenue right up the street, and they had a big warfare that evening, that Thursday evening.  

The community, they had a big warfare down there, shooting and going on—burning up stores and going on and they called out the Mayor. He came out and was gonna bring peace to the Peoples Town community, right down there on Capitol Avenue. He came out, was gonna bring peace, and he got up on his car and was going bring peace to the community, cause all the community was in a big uproar.  

Rev. Hosea Williams: It took a lot of nerve to do what he did. You know in a riot, I'd been in riots before. I was in the Watts' Riot. A riot is something you just about got to let it go its length once people get into that mental state.  

And for him to jump on top of that car that day and believe that all those Blacks would listen to him came from his relationship with the so-called Black leaders. And it led him to believe that they really had a grip on the Black community. 

Ethel Matthews: They rocked that car, they rocked . . . Hosea will tell you about it. They rocked that car and rocked. . . . They turned the car bottom upwards, on its back, and he fell to the street and we ran down there to see what's it was all about. They had police, detectives, oohhh the community was just in a uproar. And we went down there, and all us Black peoples they put tear gas, I been tear gassed twice. And they put tear gas on us. And that's what they did for Mayor Ivan Allen.  

(19:39) Narrator: Vice President Hubert Humphrey put a different spin on the event. His call congratulating Ivan Allen was broadcast live in Atlanta.  

Hubert Humphrey: Well, I have had the privilege last evening of the opportunity of looking at the television for a little while and I could see two things. Number one, that the mayor of Atlanta was on the job and doing more than the call of duty and going far beyond it. And as I've said to some of our mutual friends that "If there's a hero on the domestic scene today, it's Ivan Allen of Atlanta," and I mean that quite sincerely. And that police department of yours was careful, restrained and effective.  

(20:24) Narrator: April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. The death of the Atlanta civil rights leader again raised the potential for violence in the city.  

Atlanta native Brenda Cole: 

Brenda Cole: I recall the night that I heard that he had passed. It was as if my father or some close member of my family had died. Our home was in mourning. We attended his funeral, and it was as if hope died, when he died.  

(21:05) Narrator: Coca-Cola president Robert Woodruff called the city into action.  

George Goodwin: Mr. Woodruff called Ivan as soon as he heard of it and said to him that "The eyes of the world are going to be focused on Atlanta. Spend any money necessary, do anything necessary to be sure that Atlanta behaves properly in this funeral time."  

Xernona Clayton: Mayor Allen then right away went into action. They had all the downtown churches, they had all of them prepare meals. Mayor Allen said, "Nobody's got to pay for anything when they come into our city for this funeral." Because people were coming from all over the world. I understand that they ate at the airport free, all these downtown churches had blankets and quilts and stuff on the floor. Some people were sleeping there, and eating, not soup lines, but eating good meals. If you remember, we're the only city that wasn't burning.  

Brenda Cole: There was a strange calm here, as if violence would be no way to honor King. Or even to protest those that had killed him.  

(22:28) Narrator: SCLC supporter Gene Ferguson: 

Gene Ferguson: And I don't think it really had dawned on none of us what that meant until, that certainly for me, it was only at the funeral that I spent seven and a half hours on my feet on the street and that's when it really dawned on me that what it all really meant. And for some of us made us more determined then to kind of continue and stay involved and for other it was kind of the end and people went home. 

George Goodwin: The white community is certainly—currently—not very excited about King Week or the King holiday. Seems like it took up almost the whole month of January. And I was downtown at the time of the parade, and I saw very few white people paying any attention to the parade. Which, again, maybe is saying that our desegregation is just surface deep.  

Atlanta did not make a mistake that could be photographed. 

About the Creators

The audio documentary series Will the Circle Be Unbroken? was produced by the Southern Regional Council (SRC) and distributed by Public Radio International (PRI). George King served as producer, Steve Suitts as executive producer, and Worth Long and Randall Williams were senior associate producers. The series was narrated by Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor. The episode "The City Too Busy to Hate" was written by George King, Cliff Kuhn, and Steve Suitts with Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor.

Trouble the Land was developed from the Will the Circle Be Unbroken? radio programs by the staff of Southern Spaces and the Emory Center for Digital Scholarship. Ella Myer serves as series editor. Sound engineering and video editing by Steve Bransford. Additional editing by Allen Tullos, Angelica Johnson, Ayoung Kim, Nyaradzai Mahachi, and Jessica Halsey. Inquiries about the series can be directed to seditor@emory.edu.

Banner Image: Atlanta mayor Ivan Allen, Jr. walks out of his City Hall office past a line of demonstrators holding a large sign that reads "As a first step we want a public accommodations law," Atlanta, Georgia, January 28, 1964. Photograph courtesy of AP Photos.©

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• fAfrican American History
• fAtlanta Studies
• fRace Relations
• fSocial Movements
• fPolitics and Government