Trouble the Land:
Prelude to the Atlanta Movement

Editor's note: This work contains two uses of a racial slur spoken by a Black person. The transcript and audio includes the term uncensored as part of a narrative account describing an experience of racial violence. Readers are encouraged to engage with this material at their own discretion and comfort level. 

Prelude to the Atlanta Movement

Speech by Senator Richard B. Russell: We believe that the Negro is entitled to every right that the white man enjoys but we do not believe that under our social system with the races nearly equal in number that there is anything in the Constitution or indeed in the Christian religion which requires that the two races enjoy their rights together at the same time and at the same place.

(0:27) Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor (Narrator): At the turn of the last century, America's most prominent Black leader, Booker T. Washington spoke in Atlanta at the Cotton States Exposition. In many ways, his speech—known to history as "The Atlanta Compromise," would foreshadow the city's own approach to racial problems for decades to come.

Booker T. Washington: To those of my race who depend on bettering their condition in a foreign land or who underestimate the importance of preservating friendly relations with the southern white man who is their next-door neighbor, I would say, "Cast down your buckets where you are."

(1:03) Narrator: In tone and terms, Booker T. Washington's famous words reflected a pattern of accommodation that would characterize Atlanta leaders, Black and white, for much of the next century. The story of civil rights in Atlanta is the saga of how self-interest and self-image advanced and limited racial progress.

Student leaders Charles Black and Lonnie King:

Charles Black: Well, the prevailing feeling was that Atlanta was a very progressive city. Negroes and whites both felt they had pretty good race relations, you know. This was because Negroes generally knew their places—and stayed pretty close to them.

Lonnie King: Well, you see, I think that the people who were in the leadership at that time were unelected. They had great power and influence in the Black community. And there was this alliance between them and the white power structure to sell Atlanta in its most positive image.

(2:00) Narrator: Segregated by Jim Crow laws, Atlanta's Black population developed a network of independent businesses, churches, and community institutions, including a remarkable cluster of five Black colleges around Atlanta University.

Former Atlanta mayor, Maynard Jackson:

Maynard Jackson: Where else have you had since 1865 a pouring into a city of trained Black humanity, influenced by positive principles and values, like you've had here in Atlanta? They come from all over the world, all over the USA, and all over the world. Literally. It's almost like you can see a great hand reaching down and lifting Atlanta up, because of these colleges.

That made life a lot more bearable. It literally was a wheel within a wheel, a world within a world. Blacks could not go out to many white things, but whites came onto these campuses.

(2:58) Narrator: While the colleges gave Black Atlanta intellectual freedom, Auburn Avenue, the community's commercial hub, provided jobs dependent on Black consumers, not white bosses. Together, commerce, schools, and churches forged a strong middle class in the Black community.

Bill Calloway, a pioneer in the insurance industry:

W. L. Calloway: Auburn Avenue was considered the almost nucleus so far as Black businesses throughout America was concerned. It had more financial institutions than any other city.

(3:37) Narrator: NAACP leader, Jondelle Johnson:

Jondelle Johnson: Atlanta was a business Mecca. We had everything here that anybody just about had white. We had every kind of business, every kind of store, I'm talking about first class.

W. L. Calloway: And that's why John Wesley Dobbs, coined the phrase "Sweet Auburn" Avenue because it said it was more sugar in that one block than in anywhere else in America. More concentration of financing.

Alice Washington: It was a good feeling to go to a Black drugstore and sit up and have an ice cream sundae. Or to go to a Black bakery which was operated by a woman who would have been my third grade teacher at Oglethorpe and have pie.

(4:25) Narrator: The Auburn Avenue district also contained another important Black community institution, the Butler Street YMCA.

W. L. Calloway: It had, I would say, the largest assembly for organizations to meet except in a church, and more organizations were founded in the Butler Street YMCA than in anywhere else.

Jesse Hill: In fact, the Butler Street "Y" was the Black city hall of Atlanta. That's where the first police precinct was. The Atlanta Negro Voters League was there and there was an organization called the All Citizen Registration Committee with C. A. Bacote.

(5:09) Narrator: Independent of white control, these organizations provided the crucible for a group of ministers, businessmen, and educators—professionals who became the leaders of Atlanta's Black community. Atlanta University graduate Colonel A.T. Walden was the most prominent lawyer in town.

Attorney Leroy Johnson:

Leroy Johnson: Probably one of the first Black lawyers in the South. He used to tell us a story that when he would go into the courthouse back in the early 1900's with his briefcase, white folks would come and would look to say, "What is that nigger doing coming to the courthouse with a briefcase?" They had seen Black folks come in there with overalls and with brooms and mops—but not with a briefcase.

(5:58) Narrator: A. T. Walden was perhaps the city's leading Black Democrat. His Republican counterpart was John Wesley Dobbs.

Here's Auburn Avenue real estate man John Calhoun:

John Calhoun: J. W. Dobbs used to come in this office to pay rent. And he would say, "Mr. Calhoun, there's two things I'm going to do when I retire from the postal service. I'm going to rebuild the Masonic Order, and I'm going to organize our people to register and vote." And he came out and did both of those.

(6:29) Narrator: John Wesley Dobbs's grandson Maynard Jackson:

Maynard Jackson: John Wesley Dobbs was a character. I mean genuine, 24 carat gold character. And as an orator on the stump, I've never seen anything like it before or since. The Dobbs's oratorical style was you start low, go slow, strike fire, move higher, and sit down in a storm. That was Grandpa Dobbs's philosophy, right.

(7:03) Narrator: Educator Clarence Bacote:

Clarence Bacote: In the 1930s, he organized the Atlanta Civic and Political League. And this was one of the earliest efforts to get ourselves. . . get us organized. They would hold meetings to get Blacks registered.

W. L. Calloway: His slogan was "Walk in Jerusalem." John Wesley Dobbs used that to say, "Give me 20,000, just 20,000 Black voters, and I'll walk in Jerusalem Just Like John."

(7:43) Narrator: But the dreams of Dobbs, Walden, and others remained stifled. By 1940 a few thousand Atlanta Blacks were registered, but their votes made little impression on white elected officials. Without the power of the vote, Blacks continued to suffer the indignities of segregation.

Teacher Estelle Clemmons remembers the all-white police force.

Estelle Clemmons: I remember one night—we hadn't been living here too long—somebody tried to get in one of the windows on the bedroom side over there. And of course, my mother and father heard this noise, and they turned on the lights, and the person ran. My father called the police. And, after a while, the police did come and asked my father didn't he have a gun. He told them "yes." And they said, "Well, why didn't you just shoot him? Why would you waste time calling us? Why didn't you just shoot him?" No other kind of interest at all. They just got in their car and went on about their business.

(8:49) Narrator: Hotel worker B. B. Beamon:

B. B. Beamon: I was working at an uptown hotel in 1940. We left there after eleven o'clock. We had to get a pass from the back door man, verifying that we worked at Henry Grady Hotel, that we got off at a certain time. You couldn't get a cab, so a lot of us walked home. So when the police stopped you, you had to show them your pass where you were coming from. They would pull upside, throw a light in your face, wonder, "Where you going, nigger?" And if you stuttered a little bit, he'd put you in the car and liable to whip your head or do anything to you.

Glenn Rainey: The police force in those times was really a kind of half-Nazi, half Ku Klux organization. You see, the policemen came out of the same population groups that the Klan came out of, and they represented, quite sincerely, from their point of view, the same repressive feelings.

(9:52) Narrator: Between 1937 and 1962, the mayor of Atlanta was William B. Hartsfield. On racial matters, Hartsfield moved only as fast as he was pushed—always seeking to control the pace and direction of change. Reverend William Holmes Borders recalls approaching Hartsfield about the introduction of Black police officers.

Rev. William Holmes Borders: I remember very distinctly that I, along with Warren Cochrane, John Wesley Dobbs, A. T. Walden, C. A. Scott, and M. L. King, Sr., going to Mayor Hartsfield and asking him for Black police. And he told us, without the slightest blinking of an eye, that we'd get Black police in Atlanta about as soon as we'd get Black deacons in the First Baptist Church, white.

(10:55) Narrator: Butler Street Y Director Warren Cochrane:

Warren Cochrane: When we first went to him, he wouldn't even see us half the time. But, finally we cornered him, and he said, "When you get me ten thousand votes, I'll listen to you."

(11:08) Narrator: The United States Supreme Court would soon add weight to Hartsfield's challenge. In March 1944, the court struck down the all-white democratic party primary in Texas.

Clarence Bacote: That was Texas. Georgia, on the other hand, said it didn't apply to her. This is the way that southerners operated; always find a convenient way to circumvent the law. So we didn't get any advance. In fact, Colonel Walden and a few of us tried to vote in the July 4th primary, thinking that the case of Smith v. Allwright entitled us to that right. And rumors circulated. Old Gene Talmadge said, "If Blacks attempt to vote, if the Negroes attempt to vote, blood will flow through the streets of Atlanta."

Now, on primary day, we had at that time, I suppose, close to 4,000 votes, 3,000 or 4,000. And we couldn't back down at the last minute, but it did put things in a very tense situation.

(12:24) Narrator: Mayor Hartsfield also noted the implications of the Smith v. Allwright decision.

William Hartsfield: I read that decision and the clear logic of it was unassailable. And I said to myself, this is going to happen in Georgia. And I'm not going to get caught.

(12:43) Narrator: Police chief Herbert Jenkins remembers a meeting with the mayor.

Chief Herbert Jenkins: I was in his office, and he picked up the paper. He said, "Have you read this?" And I looked at it, and it was the case that come out of Texas where the Supreme Court said that the white Democratic primary is a practice that's unconstitutional, that you got to let Blacks vote where it will count. I said, "Oh yeah, I glanced at it." He said, "Well, you'd better go back and read it. You'd better read it two or three times and digest all of it, because what the courts have done is given the Black man in Atlanta the ballot. And for your information, the ballot is a front ticket for any-damn-wheres he wants to sit, if he knows how to use it. And the Atlanta Negroes knows how to use it."

(13:33) Narrator: Clarence Bacote recalls the 1944 democratic primary, held on July 4th.

Clarence Bacote: That was a heck of a day to have a primary. You could have someone shooting a firecracker; you'd think they were shooting a gun at you. But on the fourth of July, we went to this barber shop over on Bankhead to vote. Whites lived in this area. They were all lined up on the porches, looking down, seeing these Negroes drive up. Life magazine, the press had their photographers there to take a picture of these Blacks who were attempting to vote.

We went in there and the clerk went through the motions of looking for our names. "Your name's not on there, Mr. Walden. Your name's not on there," talking to me, "Your name's not on there," talking to Hodges. The crowd by that time had surged all up against the windows in front of the barber shop. So, we walked across the street. Photographers and reporters were questioning us. We got in my car, and I said, "Look, about five minutes later, let's drive back to see what has happened." We drove back, there wasn't a person there. I'm just showing you the excitement created by the efforts on the part of a few Blacks to vote.

(14:53) Narrator: Meanwhile, outside forces were at work. After fighting for democracy in World War II, Black Americans were determined to fight for their freedom at home. On April 1, 1946, the Supreme Court knocked down the Georgia white primary, paving the way for a massive Black voter registration drive across the state. In Atlanta, Black leaders formed a new umbrella organization: the All Citizens Registration Committee.

Urban League leader Grace Hamilton:

Grace Hamilton: The objective of that committee was to involve all the community institutions—churches, colleges, fraternities—every identifiable group, and work intensively toward getting the population registered. In order to do that, we had really mapped out the part of the city where Negroes lived.

Clarence Bacote: Bob Thompson discovered that there were over l,000 blocks in which we had Blacks living. To make the thing a success, you would need 1,000 some-odd block workers. We weren't quite that successful. We did have, at the peak of our effort, around 875 workers in the All Citizens Registration Committee who would make weekly reports as to the progress that was being made.

Rev. William Holmes Borders: I personally hauled Negroes to the courthouse in buses that we had purchased for the use of a nursery.

Warren Cochrane: Going door to door, sending taxi cabs, paying for them, taking them, getting buses and everything—that's what we had to do to get people registered.

Clarence Bacote: The YMCA was our headquarters. Everybody was activated. This was a community effort.

Robert Thompson: We had lines all around the courthouse. We put about 20,000 people on there in about two months. The whole political climate of Atlanta changed immediately. The whole thing.

(16:54) Narrator: One of the first consequences of this new Black political clout was the desegregation of the police department.

Rev. William Holmes Borders: We went back to Hartsfield and asked him about these Black police, and he asked, because of our voting strength, "How many do you want?"

Chief Herbert Jenkins: Mayor Hartsfield, he saw the handwriting, he knew what was happening, and he was in favor of it, but he was moving extremely cautiously. The power structure—and that's the business people in Atlanta that had really run Atlanta for years—Mayor Hartsfield listened to them. So did Key back there listen to them. The real power structure as I construed at that time was leaning in that direction.

Alderman Ralph Huie introduced a resolution authorizing the police department to employ eight Black police officers.

Clarence Bacote: Mayor Hartsfield always resorted to dramatics. We had a big public mass meeting at Big Bethel Church. This was around 1948. And I remember on this occasion, Mayor Hartsfield was to speak. Why, just as he started speaking, he signaled to the door, and in marches these eight uniformed Black policemen. Oh, you can imagine how electrifying that was.

(18:29) Narrator: Finally, in April 1948—with no power to arrest whites—Atlanta's first eight Black policemen went to work.

Maynard Jackson: And I was holding grandpa's hand, grandpa Dobbs's hand, when they came out of the basement of the Butler Street YMCA. Would not even let them change uniforms with the white cops. And when they walked out of that basement, I'm talking it was like you had died and gone to heaven. My grandfather was just struck in awe and amazement and jubilation and joy. And he said, "My God, look at those Black boys!" He couldn't believe it.

Jondelle Johnson: They were heroes to us, and the people in the community treated them like they were maybe movie stars or celebrities, you know. It was just a big thing.

(19:20) Narrator: Flexing their political muscles, Atlanta's Black leaders formed the bipartisan Atlanta Negro Voters League.

Warren Cochrane: Now, we didn't have strength enough or voting power enough to elect anybody in those days. And what we had to do was use whatever strategy we could.

Rev. William Holmes Borders: I remember during the early years, the Negro vote was split right down the middle with Dobbs leading one group and Walden leading the other. And our candidate lost. So that instead of splitting, we came together in the Atlanta Voters League, and let it be known that it was non-partisan. And we supported the best candidate for the position without reference to the Democratic or the Republican Party.

Maynard Jackson: Behind closed doors, they had what were legendary battles, I hear, but, when the doors opened, there was absolute unity. Not a crack could be found. No separation whatsoever. They were locked together for the good of the community.

(20:33) Narrator: The Voters League would interview candidates and endorse those who best supported Black interests.

Maynard Jackson: So these white candidates would come to Wheat Street Baptist Church at midnight at the beginning of election day, sit on that front pew and pray that they got named to the ticket because, when the program was over, the ticket went out by a network they had established to every Black voter in Atlanta. Every one.

Warren Cochrane: I hired a firm to put that card out door-to-door the night before the meeting. They put it in every mailbox, every business. Atlanta Life used to send for theirs. Big companies, which had any number of Blacks, they voted that ticket as a blanket ticket.

Rev. William Holmes Borders: We never lost a single candidate, not a one, not a one. We put 'em in. And the white folks would hang around Negroes then like bees around a clover field. They had to if they wanted to get in.

(21:36) Narrator: Black political power brought other changes as well. Maintaining the coalition of moderate Black and white leaders required shifts in attitude for political survival.

George Goodwin: Well, Mayor Hartsfield was a man of good heart. He was totally, completely dedicated to the City of Atlanta. He took the city as a mistress. He was concerned about anything that was good for the city. And he interpreted among those things good for the city the continuation of the Hartsfield Administration.

Glenn Rainey: There's a debate about Hartsfield. There were people who thought that he really had a kind of psychological, spiritual rebirth on the business and became a friend of the Black man and so forth. Maybe he did.

Warren Cochrane: Bill Hartsfield, whom we supported, was a segregationist and a racist, but Bill Hartsfield was also a man of integrity. And when he made a promise to you, he kept it.

Glenn Rainey: I think what happened was the Blacks got the vote, and Hartsfield, and after him Ivan Allen, worked out a governing coalition of largely northside whites and the Blacks in the city, and they governed Atlanta—still do, in some large part.

(23:09) Narrator: The city's white leaders conceded modest changes in return for Black leaders' willingness to accept the South's racial order. Working "separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand," Atlanta's Black and white leaders preferred private negotiations to public confrontations on all questions of race.

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.

(23:51) Narrator: Although this approach did not satisfy everyone nor address the basic evil of segregation, those in the governing circle, like Warren Cochrane, saw the Atlanta way of doing things as a vast improvement over the alternatives.

Warren Cochrane: We had to fight against racists. We worked with the business community because they wanted the best leadership we could get, they did not want rabble-rousers. Our job was to keep the rabble-rousers out. Well, the Voters League for twenty years played that role, and they kept this city quiet.

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 "Prelude to a Movement" was written by Worth Long, Steve Suitts, and George King 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.

Banner image: Black protesters march outside the Georgia State Capitol demanding police integration, Atlanta, Georgia, 1946. Photograph courtesy of Atlanta Journal-Constitution Photographic Archive, Digital Collections, Georgia State University.©

• fAfrican American History
• fAtlanta Studies
• fRace Relations
• fSocial Movements