Black Power in Dixie: A Political History of African Americans in Atlanta

Introduction

Introduction Early studies of power and leadership in the United States focused not only on electoral politics but on the influence of community leaders who were not elected officials. Prominent among these were the works of C. Wright Mills, Floyd Hunter,Delbert Miller,and others who purported that the structure of power in the United States and its varied communities is derived largely from the institutional structure of the society.Mills,particularly,argues that power is invested principally in economic, military, and political organizations and that the structure of the“power elite”is a major determinant of the nature and rate of social change in a society and/or community over time.1 Although Mills’s work quickly achieved international prominence, it was Hunter’s 1953 examination of Atlanta that has become the classic model for power elite studies.2 In Community Power Structure, Hunter defines power as “the acts of men going about the business of moving other men . . . in relation to themselves or in relation to organic or inorganic things.” He found that power in Atlanta (which he called the mythological“Regional City”) was generally inherited and that “the establishment of changes in the old order” fell “to the lot of a relatively few.”These“relatively few”were mainly male heads of major corporations,including banks and utilities in the city.Less than a handful of them held elective office, yet elected officials generally implemented their policy initiatives.3 Because of Atlanta’s large African American middle class and the political influence that it had exerted, particularly since 1949, Hunter also studied what he called“the Negro sub-community.” In black Atlanta, he found a group of influentials who mirrored, to a substantial degree, the white power structure. The black group differed, however, in its inclusion of more women and more professionals, particularly educators and ministers. It undertook to speak for the larger African American community in the way that the white power structure did for all of Atlanta, but it did not often fight vigorously for the interests of the masses of blacks. In the end, Hunter concluded that the black leadership class was only a conduit to black Atlanta for the policies of Black Power in Dixie 2 the white power structure and was, in itself, powerless in determining and implementing community policies.4 In the early 1970s, Hunter returned to Atlanta and revisited some of the influentials he had interviewed in his 1953 study and sought out new persons who were deemed influentials since Community Power Structure first appeared. He published his later findings in Community Power Succession. Hunter concluded that, although changes in personnel were “apparent in the Atlanta power structure and in the observable new structures such as those concerned with downtown renewal, the basic pattern of circular, selfselected leadership remains.” Citywide policies continued “to be determined by a handful of men in the larger private corporate groups who prod a smaller handful of public and private bureaucrats ...and who are in accord,generally, on what is wanted or needed by the corporate powers.”And,as in Community Power Structure, Hunter criticized this process as undemocratic.5 By 1970, race relations had changed markedly in Atlanta as a result of direct -action demonstrations and civil suits during the civil rights movement, as well as the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965. Blacks had also achieved near parity on the voter rolls of the city and had significantly increased their numbers in the city’s elective offices. Some of these elected officials had replaced or joined older members of the black influentials group that Hunter had identified in the early 1950s. These developments had led to increased consultations by the white power structure with the identified leaders of the black subcommunity. Yet, the black leadership, still largely drawn from the middle class,continued to acquiesce in the policy initiatives of the white leaders .6 Following Hunter’s original study, other scholars, principally political scientists and sociologists, tested Hunter’s general thesis as well as his study of the black subcommunity in the Far West and New England, especially. These included John Dean and Alex Rosen; Robert Dahl; Nelson Polsby; H. W. Pflautz;A.T.Barth and Baha Abu-Laban; and James B.McKee.While Dean and Rosen found evidence to support Hunter, the findings of most of the others suggested that Hunter’s “reputational method”—identifying power elites by interviewing those perceived to have influence and counting the times their names appear on...