Atlanta's Berlin Wall

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Atlanta's Berlin Wall
Part of the
Civil Rights Movement
An image of the barricade
DateDecember 17, 1962 – March 1, 1963
Location
Cascade Heights, Atlanta, Georgia, United States
Caused by
Resulted in

Atlanta's Berlin Wall, also known as the Peyton Road Affair

unconstitutional and removed. The incident is seen as one of the most public examples of white Americans' fears of racial integration
in Atlanta.

Background

civil rights activist, and founding member of the Morehouse School of Medicine,[8] purchased a home in Peyton Forest, a white subdivision in Cascade Heights.[6] The contractor who had sold the house was under financial difficulties at the time and had been unable to find a white buyer for the house.[9] Shortly thereafter, the neighborhood began to experience blockbusting, wherein several of the white homeowners, fearful that more African Americans would move into their neighborhood, began to sell their properties to real estate agents who then sold the property to African Americans at a higher price.[7]

Alderman Rodney Mims Cook Sr., who publicly opposed the wall

Following this, white homeowners in the neighborhood asked

vetoed a proposal to establish an African American cemetery near Westview Cemetery in the area.[14] Along with the barricade, Allen intended to rezone about 800 acres (320 ha) of commercial land north of Peyton Forest to serve as a residential area for African Americans. This land, which was mostly unused, was previously being used as a "racial barrier".[2][note 2]

The barricade

The "wall" was a short barricade, about 3 feet (0.91 m) tall,

Holocaust trauma."[21]

African Americans led a

Atlanta University students and pledge to continue to picket the West End neighborhood and stage largescale demonstrations at the wall. In a telegram sent the next day, Allen stated that he had assembled a committee to look into the situation regarding the wall.[24] Following this, SNCC chair James Forman staged a publicity stunt where he met with a white resident of Cascade Heights at the barricade, with the image of the two meeting published in a January 1963 issue of Jet. Many other publications and journalists from across the United States covered the incident as well, with Time discussing the event in an article called "Divided City."[11]

On January 7, 1963, Atlanta's board of aldermen voted in favor of keeping the barricade in place, and following this the attorney representing those opposed to the barricade appealed his case to the Fulton County Superior Court.[25] On March 1, 1963, a judge ruled the barrier unconstitutional,[6][16] calling the decision to erect the barricade "unreasonable, arbitrary, and capricious".[26] Within minutes of the decision Allen ordered the barricade to be removed.[6][16] According to Allen, the day the judge was set to render his decision, he had a crew set up near the barricade, and after hearing the decision, they had it completely removed within 20 minutes.[27] The barrier had remained in place for 72 days.[1][8]

Aftermath

Following the removal of the barricades, the neighborhood and surrounding area continued to undergo a racial transformation, amplified by

Curbed Atlanta stating that the event "became a national poster child of 1960s white-flight".[8] During the 1960s and 1970s, approximately 160,000 white Americans moved from Atlanta,[8] with many moving to nearby areas outside of city limits,[28] and today, Cascade Heights is home to many "black elites" in Atlanta.[1] The incident also change the city government's approach to segregation through urban planning, with one history book claiming that, following the incident, "Atlanta's planners and policymakers simply pulled back the lines of resistance in select neighborhoods and took their stand along a broader perimeter that separated whites from blacks."[29]

Criticism of the incident surprised Allen, who had believed that the barricade would put more focus on unused land north of Cascade Heights.[6] Discussing the event years later in his autobiography, Allen claimed he was "completely in error in trying to solve the issue in such a crude way" and stated that he had not sought out sufficient advice prior to his decision.[27] According to a biography on Allen, the incident was "the last time a roadblock was used for segregation" in the city.[30] Several sources view the incident as a misstep by Allen, who has an otherwise strong legacy with regards to promoting civil rights.[6][18]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ In a later vote over the wall, ten of the 13 aldermen on the board voted in favor of the wall.[11]
  2. ^ Zoning was often used as a form of enforcing racial segregation in Atlanta, with a common technique being to zone an area as "commercial" in order to stop the growth of African-American neighborhoods.[15]

References

  1. ^ a b c AIA Georgia 2017.
  2. ^ a b Harmon 1996, p. 147.
  3. ^ a b Atlanta 2017.
  4. ^ Green 2016.
  5. ^ Riley 2014.
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Crater 2011.
  7. ^ a b Lefever 2005, p. 153.
  8. ^ a b c d e Green 2015.
  9. ^ Brown-Nagin 2011, p. 419.
  10. ^ Harmon 1996, p. 234.
  11. ^ a b Lefever 2005, p. 156.
  12. ^ Quinn 2019.
  13. ^ "Rodney Mims Cook Papers". russelldoc.galib.uga.edu. Archived from the original on May 18, 2020. Retrieved December 28, 2020.
  14. ^ Clemmons 2018, p. 139.
  15. ^ Gentry 1999, p. 203.
  16. ^ a b c d Cristal 2017.
  17. ^ Farber 2020, p. 31.
  18. ^ a b Galloway 2004.
  19. ^ a b Tuck 2003, p. 115.
  20. ^ Farber 2020, p. 31–32.
  21. ^ Farber 2020, p. 32.
  22. ^ Gentry 1999, p. 204.
  23. ^ Tuck 2003, p. 122.
  24. ^ a b Lefever 2005, p. 155.
  25. ^ Lefever 2005, pp. 155–156.
  26. ^ Harmon 1996, p. 148.
  27. ^ a b c Lefever 2005, p. 157.
  28. ^ a b Kruse 2005, p. 5.
  29. ^ a b Silver & Moeser 1995, p. 161.
  30. ^ Bayor, Ronald. "Ivan Allen Jr. Biography: Peyton Road Wall". Ivan Allen, Jr. Digital Collection. Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts. Archived from the original on January 7, 2021. Retrieved January 7, 2021 – via Georgia Tech.

Bibliography

Further reading
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