African Americans in Atlanta, Georgia

This article covers the history, current demographics and role of the African American ethnic group in Atlanta and the surrounding metropolitan area in Georgia.

History

In the Old South

Slavery in the state of Georgia mostly constituted the main reason for early African American residency in the Atlanta area. The area that included Decatur was opened to settlement in 1823 following the forced abandonment of the area by the Cherokee Nation; with the ceding of the area under the Treaty of New Echota in 1835, plantations of rice and, later, cotton were installed in the area. Most slaves were brought from major ports such as Savannah and Charleston.

In 1850, the area which would become Atlanta, previously known as Terminus and Marthasville, had a population which included 493 African slaves, 18 free blacks, and 2,058 whites. The general population of the area had only recently skyrocketed from a mere total of 30 residents in 1842 due to the building of two Georgia Railroad freight and passenger trains (1845) and the Macon & Western (1846, a third railroad) which connected the little settlement with Macon and Savannah.

American Civil War and Reconstruction

African American slaves in the Atlanta area became divided in their loyalties to the then-current status quo as the American Civil War took place between the Confederacy, of which Georgia, was a constituent member, and the Union states; the slavery regime also became harsher against both slave and free African Americans, who were severely restricted in their movements by both local and state government in order to prevent desertion of the African Americans to the Union side. However, many slaves from Atlanta took the chance to escape with Union soldiers under William Tecumseh Sherman in his March to the Sea following the razing of Atlanta to the ground; they followed his men to the Atlantic coast of Georgia, where they were granted land under Sherman's Special Field Orders, No. 15 (later rescinded under president Andrew Johnson).

In 1865, the Atlanta City Council vowed equal protection for whites and blacks, and a school for black children, the first in the city, opened in an old church building on Armstrong Street. The Methodist Episcopal Church's Freedman Aid Society founded a coeducational school for African American legislators that would later become Clark College (now Clark Atlanta University) in Atlanta. In 1870, following the ratification of the 15th Amendment by the state legislature, the first two African American members were elected to the City Council, while Radical Republican Dennis Hammond sat as mayor.

According to the US Census and Slave Schedules, from 1860 to 1870 Fulton County more than doubled in population, from 14,427 to 33,336. The effects of African-American migration can be seen by the increase in Fulton County from 20.5% enslaved African Americans in 1860 to 45.7% colored (African-American) residents in 1870. [http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/stats/histcensus] In a pattern seen across the South after the Civil War, freedmen often moved from plantations to towns or cities for work. They also gathered in their own communities where they could live more freely from white control. Even if they continued to work as farm laborers, freedmen often migrated after the war. Fulton was one of several counties in Georgia where African American population increased significantly in those years. [http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/ajac/]

Post-Reconstruction and Jim Crow

In the aftermath of Reconstruction, which mostly ended in 1877, African Americans in Atlanta were left to the mercies of the predominately-white state legislature and city council, and were politically disenfranchized during the Jim Crow era; whites had used a variety of tactics, including militias and legislation, to re-establish political and social supremacy throughout the South. By the turn of the century, Georgia passed legislation that completed the disfranchisement of African Americans. Not even college-educated men could vote. However, while most black Atlantans were poor and disenfranchized by Jim Crow, the gradual nationwide rise of the black urban middle class became apparent in Atlanta, with the establishment of African American businesses, media and educational institutions.

Booker T. Washington, principal of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, delivered a speech to the 1895 Cotton States and International Exposition which urged African Americans to focus more upon economic empowerment instead of immediate socio-political empowerment and rights, much to the anger of other civil rights leaders, including W.E.B. DuBois, a graduate of Morehouse College who would become one of the major civil rights activists of the first half of the 20th century.

Competition for jobs and housing gave rise to fears and tensions. These catalyzed in 1906 in the Atlanta Race Riot. This left at least 27 dead, 25 of them African American, [cite web|url=http://www.1906atlantaraceriot.org/|title=Atlanta Race Riot|accessdate=2006-09-06] and over seventy people injured.

In 1928, the Atlanta Daily World began publication, and continues as the oldest African American newspaper in circulation. From the 1920's to the 1940's, 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; some of the members of the Black Crackers would become players in Major League Baseball following the integration of the Negro Leagues into the larger leagues. Sweet Auburn would become one of the premier predominately-African American urban settlements to the current day.

Civil rights movement

Demographics

Race relations

Politics

Since the rise of the Civil rights movement of the 1960's, African Americans have wielded an increasingly-potent degree of political power, most resultant in the currently-unbroken string of African American mayors of the City of Atlanta since the election of Maynard Jackson in 1973; the current mayor of Atlanta is Shirley Jackson. All elected mayors of Atlanta are and have been members of the Democratic Party.

Most recently, Atlanta resident Vernon Jones ran unsuccessfully in 2008 to become the first African American to win the Democratic primary for representation of the state in the United States House of Representatives.

Culture

External Links

* [http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/atlanta/africanamerican.htm National Park Service - African American experience in Atlanta]
* [http://www.atlantaheritage.com/histTimeline.html Atlanta History Timeline]