Christopher Silver - The Separate City: Black Communities in the Urban South, 1940-1968

The Separate City

Black Communities in the
Urban South, 19401968

Christopher Silver
and
John V. Moeser

Copyright 1995 by The University Press of Kentucky

Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth,
serving Bellarmine College, Berea College, Centre
College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University,
The Filson Club, Georgetown College, Kentucky
Historical Society, Kentucky State University,
Morehead State University, Murray State University,
Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University,
University of Kentucky, University of Louisville,
and Western Kentucky University.

Editorial and Sales Offices: Lexington, Kentucky 40508-4008

Silver, Christopher, 1951

The separate city : black communities in the Urban South, 19401968 / Christopher Silver and John V. Moeser.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8131-5625-5

1. Afro-AmericansVirginiaRichmondPopulation. 2. Afro-AmericansVirginiaRichmondPolitics and government. 3. Afro-AmericansGeorgiaAtlantaPopulation. 4. Afro-AmericansGeorgiaAtlantaPolitics and government. 5. Afro-AmericansTennesseeMemphisPopulation. 6. Afro-AmericansTennesseeMemphisPolitics and government. 7. Richmond (Va.)Race relations. 8. Atlanta (Ga.)Race relations. 9. Memphis (Tenn.)Race relations. I. Moeser. John V., 1942 . II. Title.

F234.R59N481995

305.896073075dc2094-23649

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The modern history and politics of Richmond, Virginia, have been the subjects of separate studies by each of the authors of this book. Both Christopher Silvers Twentieth Century Richmond: Planning, Politics, and Race and John V. Moeser and Rutledge M. Denniss The Politics of Annexation: Oligarchic Power in a Southern City focused in one way or another on the citys white leadership structure. Silvers work examined the forces in the white community, the business community in particular, that shaped urban planning policy from 1900 through the 1970s. The Moeser/Dennis study concentrated on one major policy, boundary expansion, and how that policy was shaped by the politics of race.

Given our previous work in Virginias capital city and, more generally, in the development of the contemporary urban South, and given also the important but inadequately understood role of the African-American community in that process, we decided to merge our interests in a comparative study. The three cities of Richmond, Atlanta, and Memphis were selected because they allowed us to examine the development of the black community in three unique contexts. When we embarked on this study in 1984, the number of African-Americans living in Memphis represented roughly half of the citys population, yet blacks were grossly underrepresented in city government. It would not be until 1991 that blacks elected a council majority and a mayor. Atlanta, by contrast, elected an African-American mayor and an African-American majority on city council more than ten years earlier, in 1973. Meanwhile, African-Americans assumed leadership of Richmonds city hall four years later than Atlanta but thirteen years earlier than Memphis. In short, relative to the timing of blacks emerging as dominant players in municipal government, each of the three cities represented a different point along a political continuum.

Another reason for selecting the three cities was that each represented a different political culture. Memphis had a long association with a political organization more characteristic of northern industrial citiesa machine. Boss Crump, whose support was based in part on the African-American vote, held sway during the first half of the twentieth century, his control ending only when a group of white, upper-class reformers successfully challenged his leadership in the 1950s. The postwar flirtation with reform was short-lived, however, as blacks, disenchanted by the reformers failure to support black political aspirations, withdrew from the coalition with liberal whites. The dissolution of the reform movement created a vacuum that was quickly filled by segregationists, whose racist appeals struck a responsive chord among the white working class. For many years thereafter, Memphis remained deeply polarized racially.

The political culture of Atlanta was quite different. For years, white reactionaries were kept at bay by an alliance between the citys corporate elite and older, more conservative leaders of the African-American community. This alliance remained intact from the late 1940s through the mid-1960s and sustained a regime as different from mainstream southern politics as was the Crump machine. The alliance led to the election of Ivan Allen as mayor who, upon request of President Kennedy, traveled to Washington in 1963 to speak in support of civil rights legislation. Allens Washington visit contrasted with the behavior of most southern politicians, who were bent on blocking such legislation.

The political culture of Richmond differed in still other respects. Power was held by the white upper class who were as suspicious of lower class whites as they were of African-Americans of any class. Richmond was not noted for its biracial coalitions, as was Atlanta; neither did it experience the level of racial enmity found in Memphis. Again, Richmond occupied a position on a political culture continuum midway between the other two cities.

The political cultures differed markedly among the three cases, and the variations affected dynamics both between the white and black communities and within the black community. Yet, in spite of the differences, a remarkable similarity in settlement patterns evolved in the African-American communities of all three cities. We argue that these developmental patterns are distinctive of the urban South and that the African-American community formed there in a manner unlike its counterpart of the urban North. The settlement pattern that appeared in southern cities constituted a relatively self-contained, racially-identifiable community separated from the larger white city. The Souths separate city and the Norths ghetto were similar in certain respects. Both, for example, were the products of racial segregation. But there were sufficient differences between the two that the term ghetto fails to capture the southern experience. We also argue that the formation of the separate city was not simply a matter of demographics. Rather, the physical contours of the black community were shaped by neighborhood / community development policy and urban renewal programs, often with black developers and civic leaders participating actively in the neighborhood spatial allocation process. Yet, it was the separate city that provided the staging ground for protests and political action, commonly initiated by younger blacks less tied to the white power structure and thus less patient with the accommodationist policy of the older, more conservative black leadership structure. We give considerable attention to the battle over public schools triggered by the 1954 Brown decision and the effect of that battle on political mobilization within the separate city.