Kevin M. Kruse: ‘White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism’

What is White Flight?

• For years white and black individuals struggle over the land, eventually the whites abandoned the field

• Phenomenon known as ‘white flight’

What was Atlanta’s white pop in 1960?

300,000

How many whites left Atlanta in the 1960s?

60,000

What proportion of Atlanta’s pop did black people constitute in 1960?

just over 1/3

What proportion of Atlanta’s pop did black people constitue in 1980?

2/3

What did sociologists Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton say about Atlanta?

Atlanta was actually more segregated in 1970 than it had been in 1940

Which sociologists claimed that Atlanta was actually more segregated in 1970 than it had been in 1940?

Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton

What percentage of the northern, posher neighbourhoods in Atlanta did Black people make up in 1970?

1%

What did Journalist Tamar Jacoby say about Atlanta?

Likened Atlanta to “the residents of old, divided Berlin”

Which journalist likened Atlanta to “the residents of old, divided Berlin”?

Journalist Tamar Jacoby

What was white enrollment in Atlanta’s public schools by 1970?

By 1970 white enrollment in the public schools had plummeted to ½ what it had been at its peak in 1963

What was the criteria for a desegregated school in Atlanta?

a school merely needed a minimum of 10% of both blacks and whites in its student body

How many Atlanta schools met the 10% requirement?

34 out of 117

What did Kevin say about the Atlanta school system?

This school system only encouraged white flight- “it certainly enabled white flight from the school system”

What was the ratio of black:white pupils in Atlanta’s public schools by 1971?

3:1

What did leader of local NAACP say about busing in Atlanta?

“You’d be busing children from an 87% black school to another 87% black school”

What was the Atlanta Comprimise, 1973?

create a program of biracial magnet schools, to integrate school staffs further, etc - did nothing to combat white flight

By 1985, what percentage of public school enrollment was white?

6% - 7,000 white students out of 110,000 in the city’s school sytem

How much did the Atlanta suburbs grow during the 70s?

more than doubled

Where did the majority of Atlanta’s metropolitcan population occur during the 80s?

86% of Atlanta’s metropolitan population growth occurred in the suburban ring

What did Kevin say about the subrubs?

“Atlanta’s suburbs swiftly outpaced the city”

What did white flight affect employment?

employment in the Central Business District fell from 20 to 12% between 1960 and 1975

What does Kevin say about the merging of ideology?

“The whites who made their homes in the suburbs of Cobb, Gwinnett, and north Fulton counties blended together not just spatially but ideologically”

What did Robert Reich dub white flight?

The ‘secession of the successful’ - whereby the most affluent were seceding from general America into ‘homogenous enclaves within which their earnings need not be redistributed to people less fortunate than themselves’

Why did Ben Blackburn argue white flight resulted in the rise of the right?

“Suburbanites have invested their lives in their houses and they don’t want to see them ruined”

What was significant about the 1968 election?

the first in American history in which votes from the suburbs outnumbered the votes of either rural or urban area

What does Kevin comment on the Old South?

“links between the segregationist politics of the Old South and the Republican campaign in the New South”

In 1971, who does Nixon appoint to the Supreme Court?

Lewis Powell and William Rehnquist

How conservative was Lewis Powell?

Led the Richmond school board until 1961, where, by the time he left the school board, only 2 black students in the entire system attended class with white children

How conservative was William Rehnquist?

In 1970, composed a draft which would’ve banned busing to desegregate schools 

What does Kevin comment about these men?

 “Nixon finally succeeded in crafting a new conservative majority on the Supreme Court”

When was the case of San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez?

1973

What did the case of San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez rule?

Justices ruled in a 5–4 decision that affluent suburbs bore no responsibility to share their property-tax school funding with poorer districts in the city

When was Milliken v. Bradley?

1973

When did Milliken v. Bradley do?

 5–4 majority ended the movement for metropolitan school desegregation in Detroit