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BRUCE BIOSSATGeorgia Ponders Racial ProblemsBy BRUCE BIOSSAT Newspaper Enterprise Assn. ATLANTA — Atlanta, like the great northern cities, is worried about its summertime. Memory of its two racial “disturbances’' last September still runs strong.Those brief but explosive events sullied Atlanta’s image as the perfect model of a racially harmonious southern city.Both white and moderate Negro leaders are concerned that worse outbursts could occur in 1967.Recently, alter a shooting, there was a one-hour flurry of bottle-throwing by Negroes in the poverty-ridden Summerhill area where one of the 1966 outbreaks took place.Leaders note nervously the Negro restlessness in Nashville and Louisville, heretofore regarded as relatively progressive cities on the racial front.Rumors run through Atlanta that militant, even radical, elements are preparing to take advantage of any trouble that might develop. There are reports of small arms being sold on the streets to Negro teenagers.What really lies at the base of this unsettled mood is tie fact that Atlanta, one of the nation's real boom towns, has now grown to the point where it has taken on the problems and diffieultits of the typical modem American metropolis.Its special immunity is vanishing. Its “model” aspects are blurred and may soon be gone altogether.Says one Negro leader here: “What the city is finding out is that this whole movement is not about a hamburger (lunch counter desegregation). It’s about better schools, housingand jobs.”A white scholar adds:4,Wc in Atlanta have progressed enough to have acquired some of the same problems northern cities have. And we're stupid enough to have created some of the same problems, too.”Currently the city is torn by argument over location of certain new Negro housing.Under Mayor Ivan Allan, some low-rent public housing units and some privately financed Negro dwellings are planned for just one large area where Negro housing is already heavily concentrated.NAACP leaders are bitterly contesting the plan on the ground it will foster further growth of a sector that is well on the way to becoming the city's single huge Negro ghetto. They want the new construction spread beyond this southwest Atlanta area.For long years, a good part of the city's Negro population was, in fact, scattered widely in “poverty pockets” of varying size. The commercial boom, the freeway network and urban renewal have combined to wipe out many of these pockets altogether. Others are on the way to disappearing. Displaced Ne-g r o e s move to the swelling southwestern “wedge” where it is now proposed to add the controversial housing.The issue is not yet resolved. But leaders see it as a troublesome factor in the equation that keeps Atlanta in shaky peace.A modestly hopeful step, growing out of last September's violence, was the city's creation of a Community Relations Commission — a 20-member group led by a respected attorney, Irving Kahler.
Newspaper Details
Playground Daily News
Fort Walton Beach, Florida, US
Mon, May 15, 1967
Page 4
Full Page
Clipped by
Michael B.
USA 15 May 2017
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