NF

This is a long and very thorough exploration of desegregation and white flight in Atlanta and the suburbs during the post-war years. Kruse writes with great clarity, which is particularly impressive given the number of people involved over the decades. He really lets the primary sources shine, and his decision to let segregationists of the period speak for themselves allows the reader a greater understanding of the way white segregationists defended themselves and how those defenses changed over the years. Kruse also writes clearly about the ways in which segregation, desegregation, and white flight away from the city/public spaces into suburbia/private clubs continues to shape Altanta and the rest of the country. ( )

A deep dive into the politics of the struggle between integration and segregation in Atlanta, primarily focusing on the postwar period until the late 1960s, as a means of documenting the development of arguments and ideologies now at the heart of the American political conservative movement.

The author lets the primary source documents, interviews, newspaper articles, and speeches do the heavy lifting. He sets up the story by establishing the political realities of the area at the time: state government controlled by the poor whites of the rural areas, but the city as run by a coalition of wealthy whites, white moderates, the business community, and the leaders of the black community in opposition to the poor white population. He documents how Atlanta's governing coalition attempted to negotiate the federal demands for integration in such a way as to be voluntary, to cause as little unrest as possible, and to satisfy the minimum of the federal standards without entirely dismantling segregation. The author makes it clear that almost all the white people throughout remained committed champions of segregation; the difference was that some saw that it was going to be inevitably broken down and was going to be bad for business, and others clung to it firmly. The author then describes the flashpoints of disruption in good order: the processes by which neighborhoods transitioned from all white to mostly black, and how attempts to keep neighborhoods white involved contrived conceptions of community and ultimately fell apart when the economic incentives of the individual homeowner overruled what might be seen as optimal by the whole community; how public parks and areas would follow in their transition from white spaces to black spaces; the contest regarding integration of schools, and how for years integration was frustrated by restrictions on numbers of black students allowed into mostly white schools, and the processes by which a school at risk of integration would experience white flight. The author demonstrates how all of these things were considered problematic by many white people who were convinced their way of life would be irreparably lost if segregation were dismantled, and fought against it bitterly.

The author then documented the collapse of the moderate white - business - black community coalition in the wake of the sit-ins and the next generation of civil rights leaders in the early 1960s. The coalition was completely against it: white businessmen did not want integration of business forced on them by law or by pressure, and older black leaders felt the younger ones were pushing too much and too hard. The sit-ins and pressure on businesses happened anyway, and business owners found relief on the basis of the passage of the Civil Rights Act, now having the government to "blame" for them being "forced" to integrate their stores and spaces.

The author's primary concern is to plot the changes in argumentation and the process of white flight: segregationist arguments began in their naked white supremacist forms, including aggression by KKK members, house bombings, threats and acts of violence, etc., and when these became less popular, how the movement shifted to start focusing on matters of "freedom of association," federal restrictions on freedom and government interference in business, and the merits of the "free market." He documents how these latter arguments would end up becoming more ascendant and acceptable to a wider range of white people as the Civil Rights movement gained momentum. He also demonstrates how white people would rather give up on an area rather than see true integration, and identifies this desire for segregated space as the primary driver for the white flight out of Atlanta and the development of the outer suburbs over this entire period.

He then identified these suburban areas as the new power center for the more finessed segregationist arguments of "free association" and "free markets" and the demonization of the federal government, and federal intervention, on account of its imposition of integration in the cities of the American South. He demonstrates powerfully how in defeat these segregationist arguments gained even more strength than they had before: he chronicled how one of the champions against business integration ended up becoming the governor of Georgia. He concludes by charting the massive party realignment of the 1970s and 1980s and how the Republican party in the South wholeheartedly embraced the previously segregationist arguments of free association, free markets, and the demonization of the work of the federal government in terms of intervention in people's lives and their decisions, as well as the demonization of federal programs for the poor as handouts for unworthy and lazy people, exploiting common stereotypes about certain kinds of black people. He points out how so many of these arguments gained great prominence at the hands of Republican representatives from the Atlanta suburbs, primarily in the form of Newt Gingrich, and how they continue to dominate political discourse in America.

The author does emphasize that many today may use arguments about free association, free markets, skepticism of federal government intervention, and live within suburbs without being segregationists or white supremacists. Nevertheless, it is very eye opening to see how these arguments were absolutely firmly rooted in the desire of white Southerners to preserve a fully segregated society, and to do so without regard to the experience and deprivation it would cause for black people. It would cast modern conservative arguments regarding concerns about businesses serving gay people or other forms of sexual minorities in a very unflattering light, since those arguments are precisely the same as used by white segregationists to justify their continued discrimination against black people.

The author's thesis will probably not be very convincing for those who are inclined to be skeptical of it, but it's hard to argue with the depth of exploration of the primary sources. If nothing else, the work is worthy of consideration to be forced to confront the ugliness inherent in those primary sources, and as a reminder that while these events took place in the past, they are too recent to believe they do not continue to have influence on the present. ( )