Jimmy Carter and Rosalyn Carter
sing with Martin Luther King, Sr., Coretta Scott King, Andrew
Young and other civil rights leaders during a visit to Ebenezer
Baptist Church in Atlanta
Courtesy of Jimmy Carter Library (NLJC)
The history of African Americans in Atlanta is synonymous with
the history of Atlanta itself, and is one of progress and perseverance.
From the early days of slaveholding until today, when the last five
mayors of Atlanta have been African Americans, the story of the
largest southern city can be told through the experiences of its
largest ethnic minority.
The majority of African Americans were originally brought over
from Western Africa and Madagascar as part of the slave trade between
1760 and 1810. Charleston, South Carolina, became the major southern
port where African Americans were introduced to the lower south.
By 1750 an estimated 240,000 Africans or people of African descent
lived in British North America, comprising nearly 20 percent of
the total colonial population, mostly concentrated in the southern
colonies. In Georgia and South Carolina the wealthy planters drew
upon the skills and knowledge of African Americans brought from
Senegambia to aid in the cultivation of rice, which was the first
major export crop of these southern colonies. The slave trade from
Africa was halted by the U.S. Congress after January 1, 1808, and
in the North the gradual abolition of slavery took place. In the
South, economic factors, notably the invention of the cotton gin
in 1793, kept the institution alive.
The city of Atlanta originated in the 19th century. Starting out as
Terminus in 1837, and later named Marthasville in 1843, the rapidly
growing town incorporated under the present day name of Atlanta in
1845. Already by 1850, Atlanta had a population which included 493
African slaves, 18 free blacks, and 2,058 whites. This small population
would grow, and by 1870, the black population of Atlanta comprised
46 percent of 21,700 residents, a proportion roughly maintained to
the end of the 19th century.
Charleston, South Carolina, was
the main port for the African slave trade to the lower South
until 1808, and slaves were sold on the north side of the Exchange
and Provost Building
Courtesy of Lissa D'Aqui
Atlanta in 1864, note sign "Auction & Negro Sales"
Courtesy of Library of Congress
The Civil War: The early history of African Americans in
Atlanta was forever altered by the Civil War. Georgia banded together
with other southern states to create the Confederate States of America,
fearing that the election of Abraham Lincoln to the American Presidency
in 1860 election would usher in a strong Federal government opposed
to slavery. Overall, as Peter Kolchin wrote about African Americans
in American Slavery 1619-1877, although "some stood loyally
by their masters and mistresses through thick and thin," when Union
troops approached, "the transformation of master-slave relations
became unmistakable as slaves sensed their impending liberation."
General William T. Sherman invaded Georgia from the northwest in
May 1864. Later that year he took control of the city of Atlanta
and forced evacuation of the citizenry when his armies burned the
city before leaving to continue their march to the sea.
Many slaves escaped to follow Sherman's armies. Burke Davis recorded
in his book, Sherman's March, that, concerned about the mobility
of his army, "Sherman issued orders in Atlanta barring the elderly,
the infirm and mothers with young children from joining the march."
Under political pressure, Sherman in January of 1865 ordered thousands
of acres of abandoned land in the Sea Islands and low country of Georgia
and South Carolina to be made available to the freed slaves for homesteading.
This order was later rescinded by President Andrew Johnson. Congress,
violently opposed to President Johnson, later passed the Southern
Homestead Act in 1866, which allowed for homesteading on public lands
in five deep southern states, although enforcing this later proved
Cheatham Hill: Kennesaw Mountain National
Battlefield Park, Confederate artillery
Courtesy of National Park Service
Potter House, Atlanta, Ga., showing effects of Union
Courtesy of National Archives, NAIL Control Number: NWDNS-111-B-4752
Reconstruction in Atlanta: In the spring of 1865 the exhausted
Confederacy collapsed and Union control was exerted over the entire
South. The Atlanta City Council later that year vowed equal application
of laws to whites and blacks, and a school for black children, the
first in the city, opened in an old church building on Armstrong
Street. In 1867, General John Pope, the U.S. General in charge of
Atlanta, issued orders allowing African Americans to serve on juries.
In 1868, the State legislature, in defiance of Georgia's Governor
Bullock, expelled 28 newly elected African Americans from the legislature.
The State Supreme Court reinstated the legislators the following
In 1869, the State legislature voted against ratifying the 15th
Amendment, which guarantees that the right to vote will not be abridged
based on "race, color, or previous condition of servitude." The
Federal government returned Atlanta to military rule that December,
stating that Georgia would not be readmitted to the Union until
the 15th Amendment was passed. The same year a positive step for
African Americans was taken when the Methodist Episcopal Church's
Freedman Aid Society founded a coeducational school for African
American legislators that would later become Clark
College in Atlanta. In 1870, the legislature ratified the 15th
Amendment and Georgia was readmitted to the Union while the Governor
had to fight to keep African-American legislators seated. Dennis
Hammond, a Radical Republican, was elected mayor of Atlanta and
the first two African Americans, William Finch and George Graham,
sat on the new City Council. The era of Reconstruction ended in
1877, when the bulk of the Federal troops were removed from the
South and African Americans could no longer rely on their political
protection. Still, African Americans found other ways to thrive,
both economically and socially. One the best examples of such success
was former slave Alonzo F. Herndon, founder
of the Atlanta Life Insurance Company, located in the Sweet
Auburn Historic District. Through this enterprise, Herndon became
Atlanta's first black millionaire.
The 20th Century: At the turn of the 20th century, many of
Atlanta's African Americans remained poor and disenfranchised, although
after Reconstruction there were political and social theories advocating
more equality for African Americans. At the 1895 Cotton States and
International Exposition, Tuskegee Institute founder and principal
Booker T. Washington delivered his famous Atlanta Compromise Speech
which urged African Americans to stress education, economic advancement,
and gradual adjustment, rather than immediate political and civil
rights. In the time of Jim Crow laws, this caused an uproar and divided
African Americans throughout the nation. W.E.B. DuBois, a Morehouse
(Atlanta University) professor and political
activist, countered that "the radicals received it [Washington's speech]
as a complete surrender of the demand for civil and political equality..."
Courtesy of National Archives, NAIL Control Number: NWDNS-H-HNP-16
The 20th century also saw the advent of violence in Atlanta as
roughly 10,000 white people attacked the city's African Americans
on September 22, 1906. "The immediate cause of the terrible Atlanta
riot of 1906 had been the newspaper drumfire of alleged assaults
upon white women by black men," wrote David Levering Lewis in his
Pulitzer prize winning biography, W.E.B. DuBois, Biography of
a Race. The deeper reasons for these riots lay in the class
conflicts among working white people who feared losing jobs to lesser
paid black laborers, as well as a social fear of the rising black
middle class. The death count of the Atlanta riots numbered over
two dozen slain African Americans and five or six whites. Du Bois
responded to the riots with his "Litany of Atlanta" which was published
in the Independent on October 11, 1906. Part of his litany
reads "A city lay in travail, God our Lord, and from her loins sprang
twin Murder and Black Hate." Mayor James Woodward called an assembly
of white and African American leaders of Atlanta on the Sunday after
the attacks. Promises of police reform were made, as well as the
idea for the creation of the Commission on Interracial Cooperation.
Before desegregation took place African Americans created their own
opportunities in businesses, publications, and sports. Evidence of
successful businesses was most profound in Sweet Auburn, now known
as the Sweet Auburn Historic District, a one-mile
corridor that served as the downtown of Atlanta's black community.
Businesses flourished in the 1930s and 1940s, including restaurants,
hotels, and nightclubs where Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington performed.
In 1928, the Atlanta Daily World, the oldest African American
daily newspaper still in circulation, began publication. From 1920
until the 1940s, the Atlanta Black Crackers, a baseball team in the
Negro Southern League, and later on, in the Negro American League,
entertained sports fans at Ponce De Leon Park (across from the Ford
Factory). Behind all the successes, however, was the daily reality
Atlanta segregated baseball team,
Courtesy of Library of Congress
Segregation began as an attempt after the Civil War to disenfranchise
African Americans in the South with laws called "Black Codes"
and "Jim Crow" laws, which were designed to regulate and
limit the opportunities of African Americans. When the legality
of these codes was challenged in 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court, in
Plessy v. Ferguson , recognized the legality of "separate
but equal" laws regarding African Americans and whites. This decision
set the precedent throughout the South that "separate" facilities
for African Americans and whites were constitutional, provided they
were "equal." The "separate but equal" doctrine soon extended to
cover many areas of public life, such as restaurants, theaters,
and public schools. It was not until 1954, in the U.S. Supreme Court's
decision in Brown v. Board of Education, that these laws
would be struck down.
Many saw the injustice of these "Jim Crow" laws, and in the 20th
century, the Civil Rights movement gradually formed in response.
Since participation in politics was largely closed to African Americans,
Charles Houston and Thurgood Marshall, beginning in the 1920s, decided
to train a group of black lawyers who would challenge the laws.
The churches in the community played an important role, providing
a leadership role for black religious leaders, especially in the
South. The church, in the days of slavery and in the segregated
South that followed, became a social center for the black community,
serving not only as a place of worship but also, according to Taylor
Branch in his book, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years,
1954-63, "a bulletin board to a people who owned no organs of
communication, a credit union to those without banks, and even a
kind of people's court."
When the Civil Rights movement gained momentum, African Americans
responded. At the heart of the movement in Atlanta were the students
of Atlanta University. Many were involved in the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee that was formed in 1960 when the first official
meeting was held in Atlanta. One of their first demonstrations was
a sit-in at the Rich's department store lunch counter in downtown
Atlanta with the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.
participating. Born on Auburn Avenue in 1929, Dr. King followed his
father's path by preaching at Ebenezer Baptist Church. With his exceptional
oratory and motivational skills, the Morehouse graduate emerged as
a natural leader in encouraging a nonviolent approach to social change.
Largely because of these ideals, Atlanta's road to integration was
more peaceful than that of other cities. Still, there were tensions
within the black community when negotiations were concluded to end
a three-month boycott of 70 downtown white-owned Atlanta stores, which
ended in February of 1961. The provision which ended the boycott,
signed by 10 of the city's elder black leaders, along with the local
chamber of commerce, was written in vague guarantees largely obscure
to demands for desegregation. Many of the younger generation denounced
the agreement. Tensions escalated at a meeting between the older and
younger African Americans at the Warren Methodist Church. Martin Luther
King, Jr.'s father was challenged for his position favoring the ending
of the boycott. Only the late arrival of his son united the two factions
in following the agreement. It was also in Atlanta where King addressed
the first major civil rights demonstration in the South since President
Kennedy's assassination. On December 15, 1963, King declared segregation
a "glaring reality" in Atlanta. Integrated restaurants were still
picketed at this time in the city, with some visible opposition. Today
the life of this civil rights leader is celebrated at the Martin
Luther King Jr. National Historic Site.
Civil Rights March on Washington, D.C. [Dr. Martin Luther King,
Jr. and Mathew Ahmann in a crowd.], 08/28/1963
Courtesy of National Archives, NAIL Control Number: NWDNS-306-SSM-4C(51)15
After the Civil Rights Act became law in 1965, a new generation
of leaders rose who bridged the gap between the Civil Rights movement
and the entrance to local and national politics. The political power
of African Americans in Georgia rose and the election of civil rights
veterans Andrew Young and John Lewis to Congress was a reflection
of that gain. Beginning with Maynard Jackson in 1974, the mayors
of Atlanta have all since been African Americans, including current
mayor Shirley Franklin, who upon her election in 2001, became the
first black female mayor of a major southern city. Reflecting on
African Americans in Atlanta, Atlanta Journal-Constitution staff
writer Mae Gentry wrote, "Still, Atlanta is a place where African
Americans feel comfortable, a place where they have a stake in events,
a place they can call home." The story of Atlanta is still being
told, and now more than ever, African Americans are an integral
part of the tale.
Some information found in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
article, "African-Americans: 1.2 million Residents Make Mark
on Area," by staffwriter Mae Gentry, printed in 2002 and reprinted
The following books were helpful for this essay: 1. Branch, Taylor.
Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63. New
York: Simon and Shuster. 1988.
2. Branch, Taylor. Pillar of Fire: America in the King years
1963-65. New York: Simon and Shuster. 1998.
3. Davis, Burke. Sherman's March. New York: Vintage Books,
4. Kolchin, Peter. American Slavery 1619-1877. New York:
Hill and Wang.1988.
5. Lewis, David Levering. W.E.B.
Du Bois Biography of a Race 1868-1919. New York: Henry Holt
and Co. 1993.
Information on Georgia in the Civil War was found online at http://www.cherokeerose.com/.
Information on Andrew Young was found at the Biographical Directory
of the United States Congress at http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.
Information on George Henry White was found at http://afroamhistory.about.com
and an article on African-American History found at http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/refpages
proved useful. Some of the information on African languages was
found in the Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition, 2001