In “Atlanta Citizenship and Housing, Success and Setback” on PLATFORM, I examine retaliation against racial progress in 20th-century Georgia through the lens of housing in Atlanta, revealing a cyclical pattern of setbacks. University Homes was the first public housing project for Black families in the city, built in the 1930s at the urging of Black activists. However, it lacked essential community spaces which were added only later, after sustained action on the part of the community. But these successes were short-lived, for residents’ upward mobility—a chief goal of the US public housing program—was limited in the postwar decades by redlining. Today, I find echo of this revanchist cycle in state politics. Following the November 2020 election and January 2021 run-off, when the state voted for the Democratic Party candidates for president and Senate for the first time in decades, Republican state legislators introduced new restrictions designed to disenfranchise Democratic leaning voters, like African Americans. Still, I find that Black voices are not so easily silenced.
While you’re at it, check out the Atlanta Housing Interplay project website at www.atlhousing.org
Construction of University Homes, c. 1936. The Spelman College campus is at the bottom righthand corner of the photo; Atlanta University is at the top left. Charles F. Palmer papers, Box 167, Folder 10. Courtesy of the Emory University Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library.