The Separate City by Christopher Silver John V. Moeser

Author:Christopher Silver, John V. Moeser [Christopher Silver, John V. Moeser]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Cultural; Ethnic & Regional, General, History, Social Science, Sociology, Urban, Ethnic Studies, American, African American & Black Studies, United States, 20th Century
ISBN: 9780813185569
Google: 70YoEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Published: 2021-10-21T05:20:36+00:00

Hartsfield talked by phone with officials at the National Democratic Committee headquarters to explain his plan and to find out how to reach Kennedy. The problem was that the candidate was campaigning in Kansas, and his heavy travel schedule called for him to stop at several places during the day, thus making it very difficult for the mayor to reach the senator. In spite of several frantic efforts to reach the senator, Hartsfield never got to talk with Kennedy. That did not stop the mayor, however, from moving ahead with his plan. Acting on the assumption that Kennedy would approve, Hartsfield proceeded first to tell the city’s black leaders and moments later the national press that the senator “had called” Hartsfield to express support for King and to urge King’s immediate release. Hartsfield’s gamble paid off inasmuch as Kennedy, having learned of the incident later that day, immediately contacted Mrs. King to convey his sentiments. King was released on bail, although the very next day a DeKalb County judge had the civil rights leader jailed again on a traffic charge. The rejailing of King triggered a fire storm of protest across the nation. That Kennedy had already expressed support for King worked to the candidate’s advantage, particularly as Nixon had refused to take any action in spite of pleas by the vice-chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, John C. Calhoun. Calhoun was a member of the black delegation whom Hartsfield had informed about Kennedy’s intervention. Upon hearing the mayor’s claim about Kennedy, Calhoun slipped out of the meeting to call the Nixon headquarters. Nixon campaign officials, however, expressed no interest, concerned that any sympathy for King would not play well with white southerners.118

At the same meeting when Hartsfield informed the black leaders about Kennedy’s “intervention,” he also indicated his intent to seek a peaceful settlement to the conflict between the student protestors and the downtown businesses. In exchange for a thirty-day truce in the demonstrations, Hartsfield promised to contact the owners of the downtown businesses and attempt to persuade them to accept black customers on the same basis as whites. A truce was arranged, giving time for the mayor to negotiate with the owners. Many of the larger merchants, however, refused even to discuss the issue, and the result was that the Jim Crow practices remained in place. The students who in October had been arrested continued their protest by refusing to seek bail. They remained in jail through Thanksgiving and December, and when the new year arrived with the students still in jail and with demonstrations back in full swing, Atlanta suffered a major blow to its carefully cultivated image of “a city too busy to hate.” The politics of protest proved too difficult for the adroit Hartsfield to negotiate.119

It was at this juncture that the older, more conservative black leaders, whose close ties with the white establishment had been ridiculed by student protestors, used their ties to the Atlanta’s political and economic elite to explore a solution to the crisis.

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