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Fifty years ago, Atlanta and Birmingham, Alabama were cities of equal population, equal economic influence, and equal global stature. Both were nothing more than competing regional capitals, little heard of outside of the American Southeast. Both were at the core of metropolitan areas with around 700,000 residents, and both maintained similar political environments with their roots in the racist, regressive culture of the Deep South. Statistics such as wealth per capita, educational attainment, population demographic mix, and net population growth for the two cities could barely be differentiated.
And then came the Civil Rights Era - and the two (up to that point) similar, rival cities diverged on courses of political action and economic development as markedly different as night and day. One city would grow to become an economic and cultural giant, not only the undisputed nexus of power for the American South but indeed a top-tier international business city, a city capable of hosting the Olympics; the other city would remain mired in economic stagnation for generations. One metropolitan area would increase to approximately 6 million residents as of 2009; the other would barely touch the one million mark, with a core county actually decreasing in population in recent decades. One would develop into one of the most diverse cities in the world, full of transplants from the American North, foreign immigrants, Muslims, Jews, students, business professionals, gay people, yuppies, hippies, buppies, and just about any other demographic tranche that is identifiable; the other city would scarcely budge in the realm of demographic diversity, save a massive exodus of conservative whites to the suburbs.
The story of the diametrically opposed 1950 to 2009 development models of neighboring Atlanta and Birmingham - the story of how two cities once so similar could end up in such amazingly different shape today - is usually depicted in an economic light. Perhaps you've heard this explanation before. Birmingham was the only city in the Deep South to hitch itself to industry - steel production - and its unfortunate economic stagnation and decline was nothing more than the same sad story of Pittsburgh, albeit transported to Dixie. Atlanta, meanwhile, was fortunate to develop an incredibly important airport and remained economically diversified, ensuring its blossom.
And while that story of economics is indeed a part of the explanation, it is not at all - not even remotely - the core reason why these two cities, once of the same soul, would develop into two irreconcilably different types of places today. What is, then? The simple answer is politics and political culture - especially the two fundamentally different approaches that the cities took regarding the arrival of the Civil Rights Era and the consequent fall of Jim Crow. The fascinating story behind the rise of Atlanta provides perhaps the most irrefutable evidence in all of America that progressive values work, that progressive values do indeed lead to unprecedented human progress, and that there need not be a sense of inherent conflict between progressive values and business development - indeed, the two more often than not work together in perfect harmony.
Birmingham's reaction to the Civil Rights developments in the 1950's is legendary, noted for its remarkable ugliness and wanton racist violence. By 1960, the city had earned the less-than-flattering nickname of "Bombingham" due to the proliferation of bombings against pro-civil rights Blacks and supporters. The bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in September 1963 by the KKK - the incident which murdered four young girls at Sunday school - was an especially vile, horrific manifestation of this bloody violence, but it was far from the only such incident. If not directly responsible for these incidents - and sometimes they were indeed directly responsible (i.e., Police Chief Eugene "Bull" Connor and his notorious use of high-pressure water hoses and attack dogs on civil rights protesters) - Birmingham's political leaders, including its mayors, were certainly complicit accomplices, unwilling to make the slightest effort to chart a different course for the troubled city. Racial hatred and tensions in the city had reached a nadir by the point of Martin Luther King Jr.'s famed Birmingham Campaign, which effectively crippled much of the city - while the world watched in sheer shock. If Birmingham did any good in the Civil Rights Era, it was as a catalyst for change - a frequent reminder of the very worst of the worst of the living Hell of Jim Crow segregation for countless Southern Blacks.
Atlanta, on the other hand, approached matters quite differently. The city's business leaders - such as Robert Woodruff of the Coca-Cola Company - may not have been die-hard liberals fully sold on the idea of racial equality, but they had the foresight to see the foundations of society shifting away from the racial status quo of 1950's Georgia. More so than anything else, they wanted their businesses to thrive, and they knew that a precondition for that success was the economic vitality of the Atlanta metro area - vitality which would instantaneously be sidetracked by wanton acts of racist violence. Working in conjunction with these business leaders was a truly remarkable string of progressive mayors, perhaps none greater than William B. Hartsfield (serving from 1942 - 1962, and one term before that.) William Hartsfield, an unabashed city booster - and in my view one of the greatest major city mayors in all of American history - was hell-bent on ensuring Atlanta's prosperity, and he too recognized that Atlanta's future would be as a fully integrated city. During his multiple decades in office, Hartsfield was able to forge - and sustain - a truly remarkable coalition of business leaders such as Woodruff, African American leaders such as MLK Jr., and white moderates and liberals, many of them arriving from the American North for jobs, and most of them with very little commitment to maintaining a "separate but equal" society, particularly if it was going to be sustained by means of white supremacist terrorism. While Southern cities such as Birmingham were busy aggressively staking their reputation as places that would "blow niggers, Yankees, and nigger lovers straight to Hell" (the words of one Birmingham Klansman), in Atlanta, according to Hartsfield:
And then came the Civil Rights Era - and the two (up to that point) similar, rival cities diverged on courses of political action and economic development as markedly different as night and day. One city would grow to become an economic and cultural giant, not only the undisputed nexus of power for the American South but indeed a top-tier international business city, a city capable of hosting the Olympics; the other city would remain mired in economic stagnation for generations. One metropolitan area would increase to approximately 6 million residents as of 2009; the other would barely touch the one million mark, with a core county actually decreasing in population in recent decades. One would develop into one of the most diverse cities in the world, full of transplants from the American North, foreign immigrants, Muslims, Jews, students, business professionals, gay people, yuppies, hippies, buppies, and just about any other demographic tranche that is identifiable; the other city would scarcely budge in the realm of demographic diversity, save a massive exodus of conservative whites to the suburbs.
The story of the diametrically opposed 1950 to 2009 development models of neighboring Atlanta and Birmingham - the story of how two cities once so similar could end up in such amazingly different shape today - is usually depicted in an economic light. Perhaps you've heard this explanation before. Birmingham was the only city in the Deep South to hitch itself to industry - steel production - and its unfortunate economic stagnation and decline was nothing more than the same sad story of Pittsburgh, albeit transported to Dixie. Atlanta, meanwhile, was fortunate to develop an incredibly important airport and remained economically diversified, ensuring its blossom.
And while that story of economics is indeed a part of the explanation, it is not at all - not even remotely - the core reason why these two cities, once of the same soul, would develop into two irreconcilably different types of places today. What is, then? The simple answer is politics and political culture - especially the two fundamentally different approaches that the cities took regarding the arrival of the Civil Rights Era and the consequent fall of Jim Crow. The fascinating story behind the rise of Atlanta provides perhaps the most irrefutable evidence in all of America that progressive values work, that progressive values do indeed lead to unprecedented human progress, and that there need not be a sense of inherent conflict between progressive values and business development - indeed, the two more often than not work together in perfect harmony.
Birmingham's reaction to the Civil Rights developments in the 1950's is legendary, noted for its remarkable ugliness and wanton racist violence. By 1960, the city had earned the less-than-flattering nickname of "Bombingham" due to the proliferation of bombings against pro-civil rights Blacks and supporters. The bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in September 1963 by the KKK - the incident which murdered four young girls at Sunday school - was an especially vile, horrific manifestation of this bloody violence, but it was far from the only such incident. If not directly responsible for these incidents - and sometimes they were indeed directly responsible (i.e., Police Chief Eugene "Bull" Connor and his notorious use of high-pressure water hoses and attack dogs on civil rights protesters) - Birmingham's political leaders, including its mayors, were certainly complicit accomplices, unwilling to make the slightest effort to chart a different course for the troubled city. Racial hatred and tensions in the city had reached a nadir by the point of Martin Luther King Jr.'s famed Birmingham Campaign, which effectively crippled much of the city - while the world watched in sheer shock. If Birmingham did any good in the Civil Rights Era, it was as a catalyst for change - a frequent reminder of the very worst of the worst of the living Hell of Jim Crow segregation for countless Southern Blacks.
Atlanta, on the other hand, approached matters quite differently. The city's business leaders - such as Robert Woodruff of the Coca-Cola Company - may not have been die-hard liberals fully sold on the idea of racial equality, but they had the foresight to see the foundations of society shifting away from the racial status quo of 1950's Georgia. More so than anything else, they wanted their businesses to thrive, and they knew that a precondition for that success was the economic vitality of the Atlanta metro area - vitality which would instantaneously be sidetracked by wanton acts of racist violence. Working in conjunction with these business leaders was a truly remarkable string of progressive mayors, perhaps none greater than William B. Hartsfield (serving from 1942 - 1962, and one term before that.) William Hartsfield, an unabashed city booster - and in my view one of the greatest major city mayors in all of American history - was hell-bent on ensuring Atlanta's prosperity, and he too recognized that Atlanta's future would be as a fully integrated city. During his multiple decades in office, Hartsfield was able to forge - and sustain - a truly remarkable coalition of business leaders such as Woodruff, African American leaders such as MLK Jr., and white moderates and liberals, many of them arriving from the American North for jobs, and most of them with very little commitment to maintaining a "separate but equal" society, particularly if it was going to be sustained by means of white supremacist terrorism. While Southern cities such as Birmingham were busy aggressively staking their reputation as places that would "blow niggers, Yankees, and nigger lovers straight to Hell" (the words of one Birmingham Klansman), in Atlanta, according to Hartsfield:
"...we strive to undo the damage the Southern demagogue does to the South. We strive to make an opposite impression from that created by the loud-mouthed clowns. Our aim in life is to make no business, no industry, no educational or social organization ashamed of the dateline 'Atlanta'..."
Hartsfield's boosterism of Atlanta and efforts to overpower perceived "backwards" elements in the city were legendary, even going as far as to ensure that Atlanta city officials interviewed in the national media spoke impeccable English without a trace of a Southern drawl. Hartsfield and subsequent mayor Ivan Allen's ability to peacefully charter a path toward full desegregation - along with laying the foundation for the emergence of one of the nation's largest and most vibrant Black middle classes - spared Atlanta virtually all of the turmoil and violence that plagued cities such as Birmingham (one scholar termed Atlanta "an urban oasis in the Sahara of segregation"). By 1965, Atlanta had earned the nickname "The City Too Busy To Hate", itself pulled from another William Hartsfield speech. When the Northern-dominated press saw the mayhem taking place nearly daily in the streets of Birmingham, Memphis, and Little Rock with rednecks and the Klan violently resisting change, and then compared this racist anarchy to the tolerance, tranquility, and focus on business development in Atlanta, the nickname seemed quite a propos. It stuck.
Think about that, just on a superficial level. Where would you rather do business: Bombingham, or the City Too Busy To Hate? Where would you rather live: A progressive, welcoming city with wealth creation and education on its mind - or a city where "uppity niggers" and meddlesome Yankees might be awakened to a brick through the window and a burning cross in the front yard?
The answer to those questions was quite obvious, and it became quite obvious just as the shift of the flow of capital, immigration, and population in this country changed from the overcrowded and declining cities of the North to those in the Sun Belt. By and large, Birmingham was overlooked, castigated as a backwards hellhole, and avoided, by businessmen and college-educated, white collar workers, Americans and foreign immigrants. Atlanta, meanwhile, became a magnet for all types of growth. The results were absolutely staggering. While in 1950 the two metro areas were identical in size, Atlanta was twice the size of Birmingham by the middle of the 1970's and today is nearly six times as large. Today, Atlanta is home to a dozen Fortune 500 corporate headquarters; Birmingham is home to only one. Birmingham has a mediocre regional airport; Atlanta has the world's busiest airport. In Fulton County, at the core of metro Atlanta, a staggering 45% of the adult population has a BS/BA degree or higher, nearly a full 20 percentage points ahead of the American average for counties; in Jefferson County, at the heart of metro Birmingham, only 28% of adults have the same level of educational attainment - roughly on the national average. The median household income in Fulton County is $57,286 - well above the American average - while the median household income in Jefferson County is $44,283, well below the American average. When it comes to culture - to the visual arts, museums, fine dining, shopping, performing arts, entertainment/sporting venues, and so much more - even attempting to compare Atlanta and Birmingham today is a waste of time, so objectively superior is Atlanta in all regards.
The progressive values implanted at the core of Atlanta's soul by Hartsfield and others like him have assured the metro's rise in prominence to today be counted as a true world city, comparable to Philadelphia, Chicago, and San Francisco. The regressive values at the core of Birmingham have left the city as a declining regional player at best, with a county government today on the brink of fiscal insolvency.
And let us not forget one last important, and symbolic, indicator: In Presidential elections between 1980 and 2008, Birmingham's Jefferson County voted for the Republicans all but once, narrowly going for Obama last year. In contrast, Atlanta's Fulton County voted firmly Democratic in each and every election over that 28-year period.
William Hartsfield would be proud.
____________________________________________________________________
Conservatives frequently like to proclaim that a culture of progressive politics leads to the death of business, punishing success with high taxes and strangling innovation with bureaucratic red tape. They are quick to (falsely) point to "Blue State values" as leading to the death of places such as Michigan. Yet history - in this case, and in countless others like it - has shown us that it is the most progressive cities that are the most economically vibrant - and that a far better case can be made that "Red State values" lead to the stagnation of places such as Birmingham. America's most important economic centers - New York, Chicago, Los Angeles - are all strong centers of progressive politics. Compare these to places such as Oklahoma City and Salt Lake City, centers of hyper-conservatism which remain nothing more than provincial players. Richard Florida's research today on the "gay index" and "bohemian index" - suggesting with much controversy that cities full of gays and bohemians tend to be more economically vibrant than those that aren't - is hardly a novel claim. Productive, creative people like to live in an environment where they're accepted, and where education and hard work are taken more seriously than an unyielding adherence to tradition. If low taxes and low cost of living were all that mattered in the equation, Manhattan and San Francisco would be economically desolate within a matter of years, and all of our country's economic and human capital would be fleeing towards Tulsa.
Think about that, just on a superficial level. Where would you rather do business: Bombingham, or the City Too Busy To Hate? Where would you rather live: A progressive, welcoming city with wealth creation and education on its mind - or a city where "uppity niggers" and meddlesome Yankees might be awakened to a brick through the window and a burning cross in the front yard?
The answer to those questions was quite obvious, and it became quite obvious just as the shift of the flow of capital, immigration, and population in this country changed from the overcrowded and declining cities of the North to those in the Sun Belt. By and large, Birmingham was overlooked, castigated as a backwards hellhole, and avoided, by businessmen and college-educated, white collar workers, Americans and foreign immigrants. Atlanta, meanwhile, became a magnet for all types of growth. The results were absolutely staggering. While in 1950 the two metro areas were identical in size, Atlanta was twice the size of Birmingham by the middle of the 1970's and today is nearly six times as large. Today, Atlanta is home to a dozen Fortune 500 corporate headquarters; Birmingham is home to only one. Birmingham has a mediocre regional airport; Atlanta has the world's busiest airport. In Fulton County, at the core of metro Atlanta, a staggering 45% of the adult population has a BS/BA degree or higher, nearly a full 20 percentage points ahead of the American average for counties; in Jefferson County, at the heart of metro Birmingham, only 28% of adults have the same level of educational attainment - roughly on the national average. The median household income in Fulton County is $57,286 - well above the American average - while the median household income in Jefferson County is $44,283, well below the American average. When it comes to culture - to the visual arts, museums, fine dining, shopping, performing arts, entertainment/sporting venues, and so much more - even attempting to compare Atlanta and Birmingham today is a waste of time, so objectively superior is Atlanta in all regards.
The progressive values implanted at the core of Atlanta's soul by Hartsfield and others like him have assured the metro's rise in prominence to today be counted as a true world city, comparable to Philadelphia, Chicago, and San Francisco. The regressive values at the core of Birmingham have left the city as a declining regional player at best, with a county government today on the brink of fiscal insolvency.
And let us not forget one last important, and symbolic, indicator: In Presidential elections between 1980 and 2008, Birmingham's Jefferson County voted for the Republicans all but once, narrowly going for Obama last year. In contrast, Atlanta's Fulton County voted firmly Democratic in each and every election over that 28-year period.
William Hartsfield would be proud.
____________________________________________________________________
Conservatives frequently like to proclaim that a culture of progressive politics leads to the death of business, punishing success with high taxes and strangling innovation with bureaucratic red tape. They are quick to (falsely) point to "Blue State values" as leading to the death of places such as Michigan. Yet history - in this case, and in countless others like it - has shown us that it is the most progressive cities that are the most economically vibrant - and that a far better case can be made that "Red State values" lead to the stagnation of places such as Birmingham. America's most important economic centers - New York, Chicago, Los Angeles - are all strong centers of progressive politics. Compare these to places such as Oklahoma City and Salt Lake City, centers of hyper-conservatism which remain nothing more than provincial players. Richard Florida's research today on the "gay index" and "bohemian index" - suggesting with much controversy that cities full of gays and bohemians tend to be more economically vibrant than those that aren't - is hardly a novel claim. Productive, creative people like to live in an environment where they're accepted, and where education and hard work are taken more seriously than an unyielding adherence to tradition. If low taxes and low cost of living were all that mattered in the equation, Manhattan and San Francisco would be economically desolate within a matter of years, and all of our country's economic and human capital would be fleeing towards Tulsa.
Progressive values - values rooted in respect and tolerance, coupled with amelioration of the human condition through innovation and education - are a tried-and-true recipe for growth and success. Politicians and cities who believe otherwise will likely learn their lessons the hard way - the way that Birmingham has over the last 50 years.
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