Black Majority — White Power Structure: A Tale of Two Cities

In my opinion, Atlanta is the best city in the country for Black professionals. But it still has its problems. A brief history lesson — In the 1960s, Mayor Ivan Allen, coined the phrase “Atlanta, the city too busy to hate,” to show northern investors that they were not having the same type of civil issues as other southern states. While Allen was able to encourage some businesses to move to Atlanta, the Black communities remained isolated, impoverished, and invisible. In 1973, Atlanta elected its first Black Mayor, Maynard Jackson. He hired Black leaders in his office, the police department, fire department, banks, and awarded 35% of city contracts to Black contractors. Many scholars and journalists recognized Jackson for his commitments to the Black community. During his term, Mayor Jackson was awarded a federal grant that would revitalize the low-income communities that had long been victims of deindustrialization, redlining, white flight, and segregation. This grant was supposed to be used to rehabilitate homes, improve sewer systems, install streetlights, improve parks, and fund social service projects in Black communities. Unfortunately, white business owners threatened to leave the city if all of the funds were used in Black communities. Because Jackson didn’t want to lose a large portion of the workforce, he used half of the federal grant to revitalize the…