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White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism
During the civil rights era, Atlanta thought of itself as "The City Too Busy to Hate," a rare place in the South where the races lived and thrived together. Over the course of the 1960s and 1970s, however, so many whites fled the city for the suburbs that Atlanta earned a new nickname: "The City Too Busy Moving to Hate."
In this reappraisal of racial politics in modern America, Kevin Kruse explains the causes and consequences of "white flight" in Atlanta and elsewhere. Seeking to understand segregationists on their own terms, White Flight moves past simple stereotypes to explore the meaning of white resistance. In the end, Kruse finds that segregationist resistance, which failed to stop the civil rights movement, nevertheless managed to preserve the world of segregation and even perfect it in subtler and stronger forms.
Challenging the conventional wisdom that white flight meant nothing more than a literal movement of whites to the suburbs, this book argues that it represented a more important transformation in the political ideology of those involved. In a provocative revision of postwar American history, Kruse demonstrates that traditional elements of modern conservatism, such as hostility to the federal government and faith in free enterprise, underwent important transformations during the postwar struggle over segregation. Likewise, white resistance gave birth to several new conservative causes, like the tax revolt, tuition vouchers, and privatization of public services. Tracing the journey of southern conservatives from white supremacy to white suburbia, Kruse locates the origins of modern American politics.
In this reappraisal of racial politics in modern America, Kevin Kruse explains the causes and consequences of "white flight" in Atlanta and elsewhere. Seeking to understand segregationists on their own terms, White Flight moves past simple stereotypes to explore the meaning of white resistance. In the end, Kruse finds that segregationist resistance, which failed to stop the civil rights movement, nevertheless managed to preserve the world of segregation and even perfect it in subtler and stronger forms.
Challenging the conventional wisdom that white flight meant nothing more than a literal movement of whites to the suburbs, this book argues that it represented a more important transformation in the political ideology of those involved. In a provocative revision of postwar American history, Kruse demonstrates that traditional elements of modern conservatism, such as hostility to the federal government and faith in free enterprise, underwent important transformations during the postwar struggle over segregation. Likewise, white resistance gave birth to several new conservative causes, like the tax revolt, tuition vouchers, and privatization of public services. Tracing the journey of southern conservatives from white supremacy to white suburbia, Kruse locates the origins of modern American politics.
352 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
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About the author
Kevin M. Kruse
12 books290 followersKevin M. Kruse (PhD, Cornell University) is Professor of History at Princeton University. Dr. Kruse studies the political, social, and urban/suburban history of 20th-century America. Focused on conflicts over race, rights, and religion, he has particular interests in segregation and the civil rights movement, the rise of religious nationalism and the making of modern conservatism.
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August 16, 2015
kruse works with an apparently narrow narrow topic — the history neighborhood-based desegregation within atlanta. impressively, he manages to document how more or less every major conservative policy position on every major domestic issue can be seen to flow from this issue.
kruse's book is a detailed account, relying mostly on secondary sources, of the evolution of desegregation in atlanta. starting with neighborhood desecration, kruse takes us through the progressive desegregation of atlanta schools ultimately through the capstone of legal desegregation — the 1964 civil rights act. kruse demonstrates how legal desegregation resulted in a highly segregated society and works out the key role of white flight and suburb vs. city dynamics in the maintenance of that segregation.
while that story is worth reading in itself, kruse's most important contribution is to detail the evolution of the political and idealogical rhetoric of segregationists — from overt racism to more subtle race-based narratives and ultimately to the language of the modern political right emphasizing individual liberty, private over public institutions and "local" over federal government. when one argues today against federal overreach and in favor of "individual liberty" it is rather germane that those arguments were bequeathed by the overt racists of a generation ago. kruse's most interesting contribution is to show how segregation lies at the root of nearly every major domestic policy debate. from suburb vs. city, road vs. public transportation, global warming vs. deniers, public schools vs. privatization, big government vs. small, its barely an exaggeration to state that the entire modern conservative domestic agenda can be derived by asking oneself, "what would a segregationist do?"
while one might imagine such a book would adopt a partisan tone, kruse instead voices as an academic. this book is not, in any way, a politicized screed. if anything, kruse advances these broader theses with, excessive intellectual caution. in so doing, he writes a damn fine book on an important topic that helps explicate the ongoing contributions of race in our modern politics.
kruse's book is a detailed account, relying mostly on secondary sources, of the evolution of desegregation in atlanta. starting with neighborhood desecration, kruse takes us through the progressive desegregation of atlanta schools ultimately through the capstone of legal desegregation — the 1964 civil rights act. kruse demonstrates how legal desegregation resulted in a highly segregated society and works out the key role of white flight and suburb vs. city dynamics in the maintenance of that segregation.
while that story is worth reading in itself, kruse's most important contribution is to detail the evolution of the political and idealogical rhetoric of segregationists — from overt racism to more subtle race-based narratives and ultimately to the language of the modern political right emphasizing individual liberty, private over public institutions and "local" over federal government. when one argues today against federal overreach and in favor of "individual liberty" it is rather germane that those arguments were bequeathed by the overt racists of a generation ago. kruse's most interesting contribution is to show how segregation lies at the root of nearly every major domestic policy debate. from suburb vs. city, road vs. public transportation, global warming vs. deniers, public schools vs. privatization, big government vs. small, its barely an exaggeration to state that the entire modern conservative domestic agenda can be derived by asking oneself, "what would a segregationist do?"
while one might imagine such a book would adopt a partisan tone, kruse instead voices as an academic. this book is not, in any way, a politicized screed. if anything, kruse advances these broader theses with, excessive intellectual caution. in so doing, he writes a damn fine book on an important topic that helps explicate the ongoing contributions of race in our modern politics.
October 8, 2013
This was a well-put-together, if infinitely depressing, look at the process of white flight in Atlanta, a city which dubbed itself "too busy to hate" and used a form of half-measures to try and preserve the Jim Crow system until it ultimately became unsustainable.
What really jumps out in these pages is the visceral hostility that white residents of Atlanta towards sharing space with African-Americans, particularly the depth of this feeling among those who were on the lower end of the economic spectrum, and therefore did not employ African-Americans in their households. Kruse posits that for these people, the public spaces like schools, parks, libraries, pools, etc. were seen as "their" spaces, and that they felt these spaces were being taken from them because of integration. As white homeowners sold to black homebuyers, the sense of "community" broke down, making these white suburban migrants more receptive to the hyper-individualistic, government is the problem message of the Reagan Revolution.
Two things limited this book to some extent. The first was the time cut-off- the book was published in 2005, and thus predates the Obama presidency. This is not the book's "fault" in any sense, but it would be interesting to see a supplement on how the election of Barack Obama affected the attitudes of those suburban migrants and their descendants.
The second was that by focusing on the white migrants only, it gives a bit of short shrift to the ordinary black homebuyer. This is an interesting companion book to Beryl Satter's "Family Properties," which goes into great depth on the institutional barriers and higher costs faced by black homebuyers due to racial exploitation and lack of FHA financing. Kruse alludes to this briefly by mentioning that higher home costs left black buyers with less money to maintain the property, which led to property deterioration. But I wonder if in Atlanta, like the Chicago profiled in Satter's book, it was more than just higher prices.
What really jumps out in these pages is the visceral hostility that white residents of Atlanta towards sharing space with African-Americans, particularly the depth of this feeling among those who were on the lower end of the economic spectrum, and therefore did not employ African-Americans in their households. Kruse posits that for these people, the public spaces like schools, parks, libraries, pools, etc. were seen as "their" spaces, and that they felt these spaces were being taken from them because of integration. As white homeowners sold to black homebuyers, the sense of "community" broke down, making these white suburban migrants more receptive to the hyper-individualistic, government is the problem message of the Reagan Revolution.
Two things limited this book to some extent. The first was the time cut-off- the book was published in 2005, and thus predates the Obama presidency. This is not the book's "fault" in any sense, but it would be interesting to see a supplement on how the election of Barack Obama affected the attitudes of those suburban migrants and their descendants.
The second was that by focusing on the white migrants only, it gives a bit of short shrift to the ordinary black homebuyer. This is an interesting companion book to Beryl Satter's "Family Properties," which goes into great depth on the institutional barriers and higher costs faced by black homebuyers due to racial exploitation and lack of FHA financing. Kruse alludes to this briefly by mentioning that higher home costs left black buyers with less money to maintain the property, which led to property deterioration. But I wonder if in Atlanta, like the Chicago profiled in Satter's book, it was more than just higher prices.
September 29, 2025
Kevin Kruse did a good job of outlining and detailing the racial shift in the City of Atlanta, Georgia. The narrative told about the political, economic, and social rifts (segregation, desegregation, voting, zoning, etc) that surfaced in Atlanta and it's vicinity. The research and point was from the 1920s through the 1970s, but the epilogue expanded into the 1990s and early 2000s.
Having said that, the author did not deliver a catalyst or prove white flight as a tangible, social construct. Nor did he really define modern conservatism by a mutually understandable definition I could wrap my head around. It was moreso delivered from the terms he used "isolation, individualism, and privatization" (pg 259). What he did do was blame white people
Having said that, the author did not deliver a catalyst or prove white flight as a tangible, social construct. Nor did he really define modern conservatism by a mutually understandable definition I could wrap my head around. It was moreso delivered from the terms he used "isolation, individualism, and privatization" (pg 259). What he did do was blame white people
In the end, the ultimate success of white flight was the way in which it led whites away from responsibility for the problems they had done much to create. pg 258Overall the book seemed one-sided and didn't show the whole picture in my opinion. There was nothing indicating figures or statistics from the Departments of Education, Economic & Social Affairs, Justice, etc., to indicate inclusive factors that would indicate a pulse on the City of Atlanta and it's vicinity. Recommended to read and form your own opinions on the subject. Thanks!
Recognizing the legacies of white flight would be a first step in reducing the steady tensions between cities and suburbs and help bring together a nation that with every year seems more polarized by race, region, and class. Before that can happen, however, white Americans must stop running away from their past. pg 266
May 20, 2010
Kruse traces the evolution of segregationist discourse in the seemingly moderate city of Atlanta from overtly racist rhetoric to a more nuanced, rights-based argument that emphasized middle class values. Kruse displays how events in Atlanta helped spur national events which culminated in the legitimation and respectability of the separatist arguments of white suburban residents, couched in the “rights” discourse of private business, lower taxes, neighborhood schools and abti- government intervention. Kruse uses a thoughtful analysis of class, race and age throughout this study, revealing how race affected the meanings inherent in the more ‘respectable’ white southern “rights” discourse on private property rights, taxpayer rights, neighborhood schools and anti-government intervention. According to Kruse, white southern segregationists were not solely comprised of lower class “redneck” whites, as middle class and elite white southerners liked to portray. In fact, middle class and elite whites effectively appropriated the sentiment behind southern whites’ overtly racist calls for segregation, melding them into an evolving conservative discourse that outwardly paid lip service to “color-blindedness”, masking the 1950s segregationists’ arguments in the more “respectable” and positive language of loss of rights. These white conservatives painted themselves the victims of what they saw as essentially the effects of the civil rights movement.
November 11, 2014
The history of Atlanta's desegregation and the microscopic looks at its neighborhoods was very interesting. The argument stinks. Does not really show or prove that white flight=modern day conservatism/GOP nor was his research complete. What kind of conservatism is he referring to? Democratic conservatism, Republican conservatism, libertarian conservatism?
He cannot prove that modern day limited government appeals nationwide (he only focuses on the deep south) are found on racism. He forgets quotes by LBJ stating that blacks are wild animals that need to be controlled so that he can get their vote. or the quote were LBJ says in effect: "I will dupe those n***ers voting for 50 years". Kruse does not explain the paradox that all Civil Rights Acts were almost 100% passed by the GOP while the Dems voted against it as high as 75%. Nor can he explain that when the South started going to the GOP in the 60's and 70's that the same GOP passed affirmative action and a GOP prez signed it into law or that it was the GOP that spear headed and passed MLK Jr Day (why would racist Southerners stay with a party that does that?). Or how can he explain that his villain, Goldwater conservatism is not equal to southern or New England conservatism or that Goldwater endorsed desegregation and helped establish the NAACP and attacked racists in the south? Kruse fails to explain that Strom Thurmond after a Dem president pushed for Civil Rights, became a Dixircrat, then became a GOPer AFTER endorsing Civil Rights and defended anti-lynching laws, while at the same time Robert "kkk" Byrd stayed a democrat all his life and never came out to change his views: he was anti civil rights and fought against anti-lynching laws. Or that Al Gore's father stayed a Dem and also was against Civil Rights and against anti-lynching.
Kruse cannot even explain that for years after Civil Rights the South still went Dem or 3rd Party and would not become solid GOP until the 80's, after going in for Carter in the late 70's or even since the 80's much of the South went for Clinton. Even in statewide elections, more Dems in the supposed racist conservative areas have been placed in office for years and decades since? How can he then explain that liberal/Dem domains in NYC (Columbia Uni.), Chicago, L.A. and other northern and liberal only cities had, and still do, have enclaves closed to minorities and ruled by rich Dem whites? Would that not make them southern conservative racists as well? I guess not since he gives liberal/Democrat enclaves closed to blacks a free pass. I could go on and on and on...
His lame, half-baked argument is: whites left the cities in the South, these whites were racists, the South is now GOP domain, therefore all GOP and the South is still and forever racist. He also rests his case on the simple: well somebody said it was so, so I agree. Why would the South go to the Party of Lincoln, the party that ended slavery, that passed the 13th and 14th amendments, that passed Civil Rights, that passes affirmative action and UPHELD ALL OF IT EVEN AFTER THE SOUTH STARTED VOTING GOP IN THE LATE 60'S AND ONWARD?! How is that Bush in 2000 and 2004 could barely hang on to Southern states like FL, LA, VA and AR is the South is full of conservative racists? Additionally, the 'argument' is that these white flight Southerners wanted the Feds out of their lives... well why would they then go to the GOP that was pushing Fed intervention in Civil Rights and that now the GOP pushes for more fed interference, at a different level than the Dems? Geez, even Obama won some evil GOP South states! Heck, the TEA Party brand of conservatism has endorsed, and helped elect, minorities in the South that the main GOP was against, i.e. Tim Scott, Mia Love, Bobby Jindal, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz... and even stuck behind those who lost elections: Herman Cain, Allen West, Niger Innis(?). Heck, they are behind Ben Carson, Susanna Martinez... etc etc etc. White Dems voted against these minorities, and Dems even chose WHITES to go against these minorities in supposed racist GOP southern areas....
Propaganda hit piece running on libel lawsuit with crap research and arguments that only because overtly white and Demcratic Princeton U published it. Lets not forget that Princeton President Woodrow Wilson loved BIRTH OF A NATION that celebrated slavery and called for the KKK uprising to kill blacks and reclaim the South from the GOP and that Wilson HATED blacks... just saying.
He cannot prove that modern day limited government appeals nationwide (he only focuses on the deep south) are found on racism. He forgets quotes by LBJ stating that blacks are wild animals that need to be controlled so that he can get their vote. or the quote were LBJ says in effect: "I will dupe those n***ers voting for 50 years". Kruse does not explain the paradox that all Civil Rights Acts were almost 100% passed by the GOP while the Dems voted against it as high as 75%. Nor can he explain that when the South started going to the GOP in the 60's and 70's that the same GOP passed affirmative action and a GOP prez signed it into law or that it was the GOP that spear headed and passed MLK Jr Day (why would racist Southerners stay with a party that does that?). Or how can he explain that his villain, Goldwater conservatism is not equal to southern or New England conservatism or that Goldwater endorsed desegregation and helped establish the NAACP and attacked racists in the south? Kruse fails to explain that Strom Thurmond after a Dem president pushed for Civil Rights, became a Dixircrat, then became a GOPer AFTER endorsing Civil Rights and defended anti-lynching laws, while at the same time Robert "kkk" Byrd stayed a democrat all his life and never came out to change his views: he was anti civil rights and fought against anti-lynching laws. Or that Al Gore's father stayed a Dem and also was against Civil Rights and against anti-lynching.
Kruse cannot even explain that for years after Civil Rights the South still went Dem or 3rd Party and would not become solid GOP until the 80's, after going in for Carter in the late 70's or even since the 80's much of the South went for Clinton. Even in statewide elections, more Dems in the supposed racist conservative areas have been placed in office for years and decades since? How can he then explain that liberal/Dem domains in NYC (Columbia Uni.), Chicago, L.A. and other northern and liberal only cities had, and still do, have enclaves closed to minorities and ruled by rich Dem whites? Would that not make them southern conservative racists as well? I guess not since he gives liberal/Democrat enclaves closed to blacks a free pass. I could go on and on and on...
His lame, half-baked argument is: whites left the cities in the South, these whites were racists, the South is now GOP domain, therefore all GOP and the South is still and forever racist. He also rests his case on the simple: well somebody said it was so, so I agree. Why would the South go to the Party of Lincoln, the party that ended slavery, that passed the 13th and 14th amendments, that passed Civil Rights, that passes affirmative action and UPHELD ALL OF IT EVEN AFTER THE SOUTH STARTED VOTING GOP IN THE LATE 60'S AND ONWARD?! How is that Bush in 2000 and 2004 could barely hang on to Southern states like FL, LA, VA and AR is the South is full of conservative racists? Additionally, the 'argument' is that these white flight Southerners wanted the Feds out of their lives... well why would they then go to the GOP that was pushing Fed intervention in Civil Rights and that now the GOP pushes for more fed interference, at a different level than the Dems? Geez, even Obama won some evil GOP South states! Heck, the TEA Party brand of conservatism has endorsed, and helped elect, minorities in the South that the main GOP was against, i.e. Tim Scott, Mia Love, Bobby Jindal, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz... and even stuck behind those who lost elections: Herman Cain, Allen West, Niger Innis(?). Heck, they are behind Ben Carson, Susanna Martinez... etc etc etc. White Dems voted against these minorities, and Dems even chose WHITES to go against these minorities in supposed racist GOP southern areas....
Propaganda hit piece running on libel lawsuit with crap research and arguments that only because overtly white and Demcratic Princeton U published it. Lets not forget that Princeton President Woodrow Wilson loved BIRTH OF A NATION that celebrated slavery and called for the KKK uprising to kill blacks and reclaim the South from the GOP and that Wilson HATED blacks... just saying.
August 11, 2019
So this is how you get a job at Princeton! I thought this was a fascinating look at the very local origins of massive political shifts. Kruse builds his argument about the party switch of the 1960s and the rise of a new oconservatism that emphasized freedom from government intervention, privatization, and individualism. Kruse starts with the local movements in the 40s and 50s that resisted the Hartsfield coalition's attempts to achieve moderate integration in places in public places. As the coalition moved on (slowly) to issues like public pools, housing, and schools, this resistance became stiffer, more violent, and more nationally conscious. However, the massive resistance campaign had a key flaw: it only took a few people selling to AA's in a neighborhood to prompt a panic and a massive sell-off. Whites then fled to suburban enclaves, but Kruse emphasizes that the fled to a new ideology as well. Rather than the collectivist mindset of the massive resisters, they adopted the hyper-privatized ideology of the modern GOP. The solution to integration became your private home in the distant suburbs, your own private pool, and private school, and massive efforts to prevent any kind of public works project or gov't program that would set the stage for significant integration (like MARTA).
In short, Kruse roots the conservative embrace of privatization in this visceral experience of "betrayal" by the federal gov't for siding with integration and the solution of moving into private enclaves in the suburbs. The justifying ideology of both massive resistance and white flight was freedom of assembly, which many white Atlantans interpreted mean the right to choose one's neighbors and to exclude anyone (but really just black people) from service at restaurants and the like. Freedom of assembly was part of a key shift in conservatism from the open racism of Wallace and Maddox to the more coded appeals to individual rights and resistance to federal "interference."
This book teaches you a ton about southern urban politics in a relatively short span of time. I found the Hartsfield coalition of moderate whites and black elders to be fascinating, especially when it broke up as younger civil rights activists pushed forward into more sensitive white ground, particularly the integration of businesses. The chapters about school desegregation are absolutely heart-rending. The cruelty demonstrated to those black students was almost universal, from teachers as well as fellow students. Lastly, the chapter about the rise of Lester Maddox (worst dude ever) was so interesting. You can see him stepping on certain rules of civility while also experimenting with a new language of private property and freedom of assembly to mask his genuine racism. His theatrical cat and mouse game with the gov't mandate to integrate, as well as his violent resistance to black customers, vaulted him into the governor's seat in the late 1960s in a clear manifestation of the enduring appeal of racism and white separation after the Civil Rights movement.
I could see how some historians could have a beef with Kruse's case here, but he doesn't say that this is all there is to know about modern conservatism. I think what is so compelling about his explanation is how rooted it is in the central experiences of people's lives: their desire for a home, their fear and hatred of the others, their love of community, their sense of their lives being directed from unseen forces from far away. Privatization and anti-gov't conservatism was tailor made for this group of people (who elected Newt Gingrich, for example) and their emotional experience of integration and their complicated desire to distance themselves from overt racism while also distancing themselves from black people. A masterful history, told in clear and even occasionally funny prose.
In short, Kruse roots the conservative embrace of privatization in this visceral experience of "betrayal" by the federal gov't for siding with integration and the solution of moving into private enclaves in the suburbs. The justifying ideology of both massive resistance and white flight was freedom of assembly, which many white Atlantans interpreted mean the right to choose one's neighbors and to exclude anyone (but really just black people) from service at restaurants and the like. Freedom of assembly was part of a key shift in conservatism from the open racism of Wallace and Maddox to the more coded appeals to individual rights and resistance to federal "interference."
This book teaches you a ton about southern urban politics in a relatively short span of time. I found the Hartsfield coalition of moderate whites and black elders to be fascinating, especially when it broke up as younger civil rights activists pushed forward into more sensitive white ground, particularly the integration of businesses. The chapters about school desegregation are absolutely heart-rending. The cruelty demonstrated to those black students was almost universal, from teachers as well as fellow students. Lastly, the chapter about the rise of Lester Maddox (worst dude ever) was so interesting. You can see him stepping on certain rules of civility while also experimenting with a new language of private property and freedom of assembly to mask his genuine racism. His theatrical cat and mouse game with the gov't mandate to integrate, as well as his violent resistance to black customers, vaulted him into the governor's seat in the late 1960s in a clear manifestation of the enduring appeal of racism and white separation after the Civil Rights movement.
I could see how some historians could have a beef with Kruse's case here, but he doesn't say that this is all there is to know about modern conservatism. I think what is so compelling about his explanation is how rooted it is in the central experiences of people's lives: their desire for a home, their fear and hatred of the others, their love of community, their sense of their lives being directed from unseen forces from far away. Privatization and anti-gov't conservatism was tailor made for this group of people (who elected Newt Gingrich, for example) and their emotional experience of integration and their complicated desire to distance themselves from overt racism while also distancing themselves from black people. A masterful history, told in clear and even occasionally funny prose.
January 3, 2011
I wish all of my peers would read this book. My high school classmate Kevin Kruse is the author; he's now a history professor at Princeton, but that's just the reason why I (and now you) found out about it. The reason you should read it is that Kruse has chosen a powerful and proximate subject matter: the pro-segregation activists in Atlanta, and the morphing of their overtly racial arguments to more ostensibly neutral ones, some of which are still used in politics today.
The one great disadvantage of reading this book is that it immerses you in the segregationist energy and mindset of the moment, a moment I always knew about but never experienced first-hand. Having read this book, I now have second-hand memories I desperately want to forget.
People of my generation - born around the early 70's or later - will be both troubled and to some degree awakened by this deep dive into the recent past that we barely missed. It is ugly, but the history of both the familiar overtones (because they survive to this day) and the unfamiliar specifics (because I did not live them, even though I thought I know them) are better off known than not.
The one great disadvantage of reading this book is that it immerses you in the segregationist energy and mindset of the moment, a moment I always knew about but never experienced first-hand. Having read this book, I now have second-hand memories I desperately want to forget.
People of my generation - born around the early 70's or later - will be both troubled and to some degree awakened by this deep dive into the recent past that we barely missed. It is ugly, but the history of both the familiar overtones (because they survive to this day) and the unfamiliar specifics (because I did not live them, even though I thought I know them) are better off known than not.
July 12, 2025
Summary: Local history matters.
I am not going to repeat my previous review. I reread this after about six years with my book group. It is always interesting rereading something with a group because different people are impacted by different aspects of the book. Different areas strike them because they have a different connection to the history. My book group is made up of people who have all lived in the Atlanta areas for 10 or more years, but none of us were born here. We all came here as adults, mostly 20 to 30 years ago.
That connection that we have to spaces and institutions matters. All of us had connections to this book because organizations that we were in, or spaces that we commonly use, or jobs that we have had were discussed in the book. Knowing that a school that our kids went to or a club that we belong to or an employer that we have has a relationship to has a history of upholding segregation in a way that we were unfamiliar with, means that we did not know the fuller picture that we probably should have.
I continue to be a bit frustrated with how Kruse ended the book. He has nine solid chapters on history drawing an argument that he then summarizes in a nine page epilogue. I would like to see him do a second edition of the book where he adds a new chapter at the end that very clearly shows the mid 90s to 2020s. I live in Cobb County, one of the areas that grew because of White Flight. In the early 1970s, the population was 95% white. In the 2020 census, the population was 50.1% white and the main county school district has been predominately minority for nearly 15 years. Part of the reality of white flight is that as Cobb has become more racially diverse, some people have continued to move further away from Atlanta continuing the process in slightly different ways from the original white flight.
The book also does not really grapple with the modern reality of ethnic enclaves, especially of immigrants that may have some anti-black racism as part of the choice of location. Forsyth County, which was the subject of Blood At the Root, and which had essentially no black residents until the early 2000s after nearly a century of being a sundown community, is now nearly 1/3 Asian. That is still a radicalized reality, but it is a different radicalized reality than a simply all white community.
Narrative history is hard to discuss with a group. In part it isn't really about ideas, but discussion of history. And either it is an accurate presentation of history or it isn't. If it isn't, then you can discuss how the history is cherry picked or framed badly, but to have that discussion, you have to actually know the history well enough to give evidence. I think that White Flight is a good history, but for those that do not have a good background in civil rights era, local Atlanta history, or the broad social changes in media, government and other institutions since the 1950s, you may not know if it is a good history or not. I always wanted more context and discussion, but I also have a very good background in the history of the era. And much of my group did not and found the book challenging to keep all the threads together. Especially the earlier chapters which broadly progress chronologically, but still are thematically developed, there is an overlap in the history from one chapter to another but with a different facet, which can make holding a timeline in your head a challenge.
Everyone in the group commented on it being one of the best books we have read. Everyone commented about how they had recommended it to others. It is well worth reading, especially if you actually live in the Atlanta areas. But it is challenging if you are not familiar with the underlying history to keep everything straight and to follow the characters and movements of the history.
This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/white-flight-atlant...
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Summary: ‘White Atlantans made clear when faced with the threat of desegregation they would abandon the public space, no matter how prized, rather than see it integrated.'
I am not going to repeat my previous review. I reread this after about six years with my book group. It is always interesting rereading something with a group because different people are impacted by different aspects of the book. Different areas strike them because they have a different connection to the history. My book group is made up of people who have all lived in the Atlanta areas for 10 or more years, but none of us were born here. We all came here as adults, mostly 20 to 30 years ago.
That connection that we have to spaces and institutions matters. All of us had connections to this book because organizations that we were in, or spaces that we commonly use, or jobs that we have had were discussed in the book. Knowing that a school that our kids went to or a club that we belong to or an employer that we have has a relationship to has a history of upholding segregation in a way that we were unfamiliar with, means that we did not know the fuller picture that we probably should have.
I continue to be a bit frustrated with how Kruse ended the book. He has nine solid chapters on history drawing an argument that he then summarizes in a nine page epilogue. I would like to see him do a second edition of the book where he adds a new chapter at the end that very clearly shows the mid 90s to 2020s. I live in Cobb County, one of the areas that grew because of White Flight. In the early 1970s, the population was 95% white. In the 2020 census, the population was 50.1% white and the main county school district has been predominately minority for nearly 15 years. Part of the reality of white flight is that as Cobb has become more racially diverse, some people have continued to move further away from Atlanta continuing the process in slightly different ways from the original white flight.
The book also does not really grapple with the modern reality of ethnic enclaves, especially of immigrants that may have some anti-black racism as part of the choice of location. Forsyth County, which was the subject of Blood At the Root, and which had essentially no black residents until the early 2000s after nearly a century of being a sundown community, is now nearly 1/3 Asian. That is still a radicalized reality, but it is a different radicalized reality than a simply all white community.
Narrative history is hard to discuss with a group. In part it isn't really about ideas, but discussion of history. And either it is an accurate presentation of history or it isn't. If it isn't, then you can discuss how the history is cherry picked or framed badly, but to have that discussion, you have to actually know the history well enough to give evidence. I think that White Flight is a good history, but for those that do not have a good background in civil rights era, local Atlanta history, or the broad social changes in media, government and other institutions since the 1950s, you may not know if it is a good history or not. I always wanted more context and discussion, but I also have a very good background in the history of the era. And much of my group did not and found the book challenging to keep all the threads together. Especially the earlier chapters which broadly progress chronologically, but still are thematically developed, there is an overlap in the history from one chapter to another but with a different facet, which can make holding a timeline in your head a challenge.
Everyone in the group commented on it being one of the best books we have read. Everyone commented about how they had recommended it to others. It is well worth reading, especially if you actually live in the Atlanta areas. But it is challenging if you are not familiar with the underlying history to keep everything straight and to follow the characters and movements of the history.
This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/white-flight-atlant...
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Summary: ‘White Atlantans made clear when faced with the threat of desegregation they would abandon the public space, no matter how prized, rather than see it integrated.'
Kevin Kruse has become a 'twitter famous' historian. He has become known for his long detailed threads, with lots of documentation, rebutting Dinesh D'Souza. If you are on twitter and do not follow him, he is a worthy twitter follow. Earlier this year I read his most recent book, Fault Lines: A History of the United States Since 1974.
Although I live just outside of Atlanta, and my wife’s family has lived in the Atlanta area for generations, I do not know well the history of Atlanta. Local accounts like this are essential to gain an understanding of modern realities. For instance, even this year, there has been much discussion about public transportation and Gwinnett County narrowly voted against extending public transportation from Atlanta into the suburbs. Historical context is necessary to understand the current events fully. (Blood at the Root is another local history about an earlier era that also still has modern implications.)
White Flight is a detailed local history from the early 1940s through the mid-1960s with briefer excursions into the 1990s. Part of the thesis of the book is that the modern conservative movement, especially the libertarian wing of that movement was influenced by the individualism that arose in white flight. My oversimplification of Kruse's argument is that before desegregation White southerners were not necessarily pro-tax, but were more supportive of public spaces, parks and common good types of activities when those spaces were exclusively White. But as desegregation became required for all public areas, Whites largely abandoned public spaces as those spaces became integrated. White flight created a kind of individualism and self-sufficiency because the home of the individual could not be required to be integrated. And at the same time, support for public good spending decreased because Whites had a decreasing interest in shared common good spending and space (including schools).
Because I do not know the local history well, I literally gasped when I heard about KKK counter-protests to the protests against Rich’s Department stores. As documented earlier in the book, Atlanta had a history of integration of public spaces being the result of behind the scenes negotiations and not public protests. Part of the behind the scenes talks was the coalition of political and business leaders that wanted to avoid financial disruption. Black religious and political leaders of Martin Luther King Sr’s era were willing to allow for slower and partial victories. After Martin Luther King Jr returned to Atlanta after the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the boycotts against Rich’s Department store started. Rich and other business leaders had been supportive of the integration of public schools and public transportation but were opposed to requiring integration in their stores.
One of the consistent themes of the book is that wealthy White Atlantans were in general no less prejudiced than middle and working-class White Atlantans, but the wealthy were more likely to support integration because of the financial and public relations problems of segregation. Early integration fights were about public spaces that the wealthy were not expected to use or areas that the wealthy could pay to avoid, such as public golf courses, public transportation, and public schools. Both wealthy and middle or working-class Whites were not interested in integration, but middle and working-class Whites did not have financial resources to support private schooling, private cars, and private country clubs. Middle and working-class Whites then viewed integration as ‘stealing’ or giving away space to Black Atlantans. The concept that the areas were not being given to Black Atlantans but integrated for use by both White and Black Atlantans was just not considered by White Atlantans.
White Flight is an excellent local history that makes use of concepts that can be applied more broadly. I want to read something from Kruse about how this may or may not reflect White Flight in other areas of the country and how that impacted the rise of conservative politics in other regions. And I would be interested in a sociological exploration of how racism has and has not given rise to social isolation more broadly.
White Flight has not ended. My home county, Cobb, which is just Northwest of Atlanta has become increasingly diverse and is likely to become a majority-minority community in the next 4 to 5 years if the trends continue (the school system is already majority-minority system.) Over the past year or so, the school system and county politics have increasingly had racial conflict as an undercurrent of many issues. East Cobb, which is still predominately White, has a movement to incorporate and form a separate city as the county is likely to swing to a Democratic majority in the next couple of elections. The county voted narrowly for Clinton in the 2016 election and in 2018 US 6th District, Newt Gingrich's old district was won by Lucy McBath, a Black woman and Democrat. That district does not follow county lines but is a sign of the switch. Politics and race are related, and Kruse highlights the complications of that relationship and how that relationship has changed over the decades.
Similar to Jemar Tisby's point in The Color of Compromise, methods of racism and racial isolation change over time, but they are not necessarily going away. Part of the benefit of White Flight is that it is a good reminder that the calls for explicit segregation that was common before the 1960s have largely faded. But there is a difference between legal segregation and relational integration; most White people still are relationally segregated. Most people that are calling for a new East Cobb city are not calling for it as an explicit segregationist ideology. But it is hard to think that racial attitudes are not playing some role. And while the explicit segregationist attitudes and rhetoric have faded, many of the arguments that were used to support those calls are remarkably similar. The concepts of 'outside agitators', 'ideological bias' (now cultural marxism instead of communism), and freedom of choice and many more are relatively unchanged.
History matters. We cannot merely treat contemporary issues that involve race in isolation from the origins — current rise in school segregation matters. The loss of Black homeownership in the post-2007 economy is related to earlier legal segregation. The concern over 'good schools' is similar to earlier segregated schools. That is not to say they are exact parallels, but as is a common phrase among historians, history does not repeat, but it often rhymes.
December 16, 2025
Should be required reading for the state of GA. Truly nothing new under the sun.
I think most people have no idea the social structures that existed in 20th century America, or the state of our current social structures. There was so much social capital, both black in white, in our cities and communities. So much drama in attempting to bring about an integrated public life. It is interesting to think about what things would look like today had slightly different decisions been made.
Note to the author, more paragraphs would be preferred. I almost quit early when faced with the walls of text on each page.
I also think the book could find a wider audience if the conservative thesis was left out of the title. While the thesis is good, it is secondary to the less ideological, and very in depth, telling of the story of white flight in Atlanta.
I think most people have no idea the social structures that existed in 20th century America, or the state of our current social structures. There was so much social capital, both black in white, in our cities and communities. So much drama in attempting to bring about an integrated public life. It is interesting to think about what things would look like today had slightly different decisions been made.
Note to the author, more paragraphs would be preferred. I almost quit early when faced with the walls of text on each page.
I also think the book could find a wider audience if the conservative thesis was left out of the title. While the thesis is good, it is secondary to the less ideological, and very in depth, telling of the story of white flight in Atlanta.
May 7, 2025
Kruse uses primary sources to show how ideas today (and he wrote in 2006) such as “federal government is overreaching and too big” “middle class tax dollars bankroll the poor” “public ____ bad, private ____ good” stem from the ideology of white residents of cities moving out to the suburbs to avoid the integration required by the Civil Rights Acts.
June 20, 2022
Really excellent history of white flight, just an okay history of how that lead to modern conservatism. Admittedly it’s not too hard to connect the dots, but I also have a political science degree and read a fair amount of legal/political history. This book did a great job of chronicling white flight and the way white supremacist rhetoric has been toned down as suburban secession went mainstream. Worth a read (or listen).
October 26, 2019
Accessible deep dive into the history of desegregation in Atlanta. Such an incredibly infuriating read.
June 23, 2025
Much like The Color of Law, this book outlines policies, choices, and attitudes that I knew about but were just much more stark when laid out across 14 hours of listening. Narrowing the focus to a specific metro area, especially one like Atlanta, made it even more salient that we choose to live in the world we live in. We choose to be less efficient, less communal, and more divided for largely stupid reasons. Atlanta could be a much better city but hate (some wild hate at that, the quotes were going CRAZY), fear, and selfishness leave us wishing we could maximize our and fulfill our potential. This book also makes me re-realize that some people don’t want to see cities be great because they know that if a city rises that some people in it would rise, too. And they just don’t want that to happen.
I recommend this book to anyone but especially to those who live in the Atlanta metro area. It should be mandatory reading, really.
I recommend this book to anyone but especially to those who live in the Atlanta metro area. It should be mandatory reading, really.
Read
January 30, 2024Has been on the "to read" shelf for way too long and I'm glad I finally got around to reading this. Having a lot of connections to Atlanta in the past, this book read a bit closer to home than many histories. Like most of Kruse's work, the research is articulated in a way that shows the impact on individuals and communities beyond the obvious.
The term "white flight" is thrown around a lot in the South, in cities, in politics, and especially with my family from Atlanta. I've even used white Atlantians use the term as a sense of pride. Kruse offers the chance to understand better the term, the phenomenon, and most importantly the impacts.
The term "white flight" is thrown around a lot in the South, in cities, in politics, and especially with my family from Atlanta. I've even used white Atlantians use the term as a sense of pride. Kruse offers the chance to understand better the term, the phenomenon, and most importantly the impacts.
June 12, 2018
This book is part of a wave of pretty solid social/cultural histories that used local studies to examine national historical trends, many of them published by Princeton University Press in the 2000s. Kevin Kruse looks at Atlanta in the mid-twentieth century and the ways it dealt with race, specifically as it pertained to desegregation and class. For decades, Atlanta had prided itself on being forward-thinking and racially moderate- the “town too busy to hate.” That all went out the window once it became clear that black people weren’t going to be content to be second-class citizens, disallowed from public services and spaces. “White Flight” traces the patterns and broad historical effects of the temper tantrum the white population of Atlanta threw in response.
Kruse goes through a number of the efforts white Atlantans tried to bolster and reinscribe formal racial separation in the period from the 1940s and the 1960s. Open racial terrorism, including bombings, came into play most often as black families attempted to buy homes in white neighborhoods. Neighborhood-based public resources such as schools, parks, pools, and busses were generally abandoned by whites — and therefore underfunded — rather than allowed use by integrated publics. Most of this affected working-class white Atlantans; even middle-class black families couldn’t afford (and certainly couldn’t secure loans) to buy in middle-class neighborhoods. Things finally reached the upper classes of white Atlanta when the sit-ins at restaurants and stores began to challenge the merchant elite of the city for control of their space, and when demands came to desegregate spaces where they congregated, like golf courses. Then they lost their sense of noblesse and began flipping out, too. And in Kruse’s telling, they all acted en bloc, only disagreeing on whether intransigence or flight was the proper response to desegregation- nobody thought about trying to make it work, nobody white anyway. Flight won out.
In the end, none of the formally, legally racialized bulwarks of the segregation order remained standing in the late 20th century. What we have instead is a racial order kept in place by control of capital, which in turn commands space (in the form of real estate) and force (governments, taxes, borders, cops). The new suburbs that whites fled into, not just in Atlanta but all over the US, grew into cut-off enclaves- at one point, Metropolitan Atlanta had 56 separate municipalities in it, each with its own taxes, zoning code, schools, etc. Using notionally color-blind language about “small government” and “local control,” these suburbs can replicate something like the experience of segregation for the white people who live in them.
There is a caveat there, though, two things that changed in substituting informal suburban segregation for the older formal, urban version. First, people were enjoined to avoid open expressions of vulgar race hate in public and in the legally binding rules. Second, and more consequentially, white Atlantans in the segregation era enjoyed well-funded public spaces and goods. Post-white flight, suburbanites came to abjure the idea of the public altogether. In some instances, the public schools, behind the walls of exclusive zip codes, continued to have some esteem (see also, suburban Massachusetts). But for the most part, public transit, public housing, public leisure- all of these were replaced by private equivalents. Many of the principles we associate with suburban design and governance were there before white flight, but white flight codified it, standardized it, and put a ton of money and political will behind it. This privatization eventually came to be a matter of principle, as expressed by politicians from these rapidly expanding suburbs, and none more openly than Newt Gingrich, who represented the Atlanta suburbs.
In Kruse’s telling, the real secession wasn’t the southern states from the northern- it was the white suburbs created out of the flight from desegregation seceding from the rest of society, despite being entirely dependent on urban cores and the federal government for their very existence. Consciously or not, their leaders succeeded where earlier reactionaries failed, and actually found a way to give a substantial portion of the population just enough property to feel like they’re in the master class- and just enough anxiety to be willing to fight to protect it, and to consider any other system not just wrong, but dangerous. Moreover, by helping destroy the cities in the mid-20th century, they also spiked the most viable alternative to that way of life. They even went so far as to rebuild some cities on a sort of privatopia-lite model and let their bored spawn go live in them!
In the end, soft segregationists called liberalism’s bluff. Liberals weren’t going to allow formal segregation anymore by the mid-20th century. This was in part due to values, but liberals had the political capital and the will to go along with it in large part due to the Cold War- segregation being a bad look when wooing developing world allies. But liberals also weren’t willing to challenge capitalism, and the smarter, later generations of segregationists knew it. Crying about the big mean gummint making you serve milkshakes to black customers was for small-timers. The real action, and the real money, was in remaking segregation with the tools — capital, and the way it can command institutions and populations — at hand. *****
Kruse goes through a number of the efforts white Atlantans tried to bolster and reinscribe formal racial separation in the period from the 1940s and the 1960s. Open racial terrorism, including bombings, came into play most often as black families attempted to buy homes in white neighborhoods. Neighborhood-based public resources such as schools, parks, pools, and busses were generally abandoned by whites — and therefore underfunded — rather than allowed use by integrated publics. Most of this affected working-class white Atlantans; even middle-class black families couldn’t afford (and certainly couldn’t secure loans) to buy in middle-class neighborhoods. Things finally reached the upper classes of white Atlanta when the sit-ins at restaurants and stores began to challenge the merchant elite of the city for control of their space, and when demands came to desegregate spaces where they congregated, like golf courses. Then they lost their sense of noblesse and began flipping out, too. And in Kruse’s telling, they all acted en bloc, only disagreeing on whether intransigence or flight was the proper response to desegregation- nobody thought about trying to make it work, nobody white anyway. Flight won out.
In the end, none of the formally, legally racialized bulwarks of the segregation order remained standing in the late 20th century. What we have instead is a racial order kept in place by control of capital, which in turn commands space (in the form of real estate) and force (governments, taxes, borders, cops). The new suburbs that whites fled into, not just in Atlanta but all over the US, grew into cut-off enclaves- at one point, Metropolitan Atlanta had 56 separate municipalities in it, each with its own taxes, zoning code, schools, etc. Using notionally color-blind language about “small government” and “local control,” these suburbs can replicate something like the experience of segregation for the white people who live in them.
There is a caveat there, though, two things that changed in substituting informal suburban segregation for the older formal, urban version. First, people were enjoined to avoid open expressions of vulgar race hate in public and in the legally binding rules. Second, and more consequentially, white Atlantans in the segregation era enjoyed well-funded public spaces and goods. Post-white flight, suburbanites came to abjure the idea of the public altogether. In some instances, the public schools, behind the walls of exclusive zip codes, continued to have some esteem (see also, suburban Massachusetts). But for the most part, public transit, public housing, public leisure- all of these were replaced by private equivalents. Many of the principles we associate with suburban design and governance were there before white flight, but white flight codified it, standardized it, and put a ton of money and political will behind it. This privatization eventually came to be a matter of principle, as expressed by politicians from these rapidly expanding suburbs, and none more openly than Newt Gingrich, who represented the Atlanta suburbs.
In Kruse’s telling, the real secession wasn’t the southern states from the northern- it was the white suburbs created out of the flight from desegregation seceding from the rest of society, despite being entirely dependent on urban cores and the federal government for their very existence. Consciously or not, their leaders succeeded where earlier reactionaries failed, and actually found a way to give a substantial portion of the population just enough property to feel like they’re in the master class- and just enough anxiety to be willing to fight to protect it, and to consider any other system not just wrong, but dangerous. Moreover, by helping destroy the cities in the mid-20th century, they also spiked the most viable alternative to that way of life. They even went so far as to rebuild some cities on a sort of privatopia-lite model and let their bored spawn go live in them!
In the end, soft segregationists called liberalism’s bluff. Liberals weren’t going to allow formal segregation anymore by the mid-20th century. This was in part due to values, but liberals had the political capital and the will to go along with it in large part due to the Cold War- segregation being a bad look when wooing developing world allies. But liberals also weren’t willing to challenge capitalism, and the smarter, later generations of segregationists knew it. Crying about the big mean gummint making you serve milkshakes to black customers was for small-timers. The real action, and the real money, was in remaking segregation with the tools — capital, and the way it can command institutions and populations — at hand. *****
June 10, 2021
I’m so glad I read this book. It’s such a wealth of information on the transformation of Atlanta over time. Growing up and going to school here, I always knew that I-20 was the historic racial dividing line of the city, but didn’t really know the details; heard said (as a private school child myself) that private schools were more for social status/ maintaining the white community than for quality of education…etc etc etc.
So many of these tidbits of my experience have come together much more clearly with the help of this carefully researched book.
So many of these tidbits of my experience have come together much more clearly with the help of this carefully researched book.
August 4, 2020
Very good, and powerful book. Honestly, you’re going to be very upset reading it. The people who are willing to say horribly hateful things, this public, is shocking. What they say is horrible, and disgusting. What they do, to human beings, is even worse. But it’s important to know how we got to where we are today.
Really, it spans mostly two decades, the 50s and 60s, in extreme detail. And that’s really the only detractor of this book, the detail. It reads almost as a college textbook. And that’s fine, but sometimes the amount of numbers, data points, and street level detail of cities, is a bit too much.
But well worth the read. It had a ton of information, a lot of which I had no idea of beforehand.
Really, it spans mostly two decades, the 50s and 60s, in extreme detail. And that’s really the only detractor of this book, the detail. It reads almost as a college textbook. And that’s fine, but sometimes the amount of numbers, data points, and street level detail of cities, is a bit too much.
But well worth the read. It had a ton of information, a lot of which I had no idea of beforehand.
February 19, 2021
Wow-- this book clearly lays out how the foundation of today's political landscape. While the book is a long read, it's an important read. I found that this book was surprisingly relevant and helped me to understand the extremism of the present day.
December 11, 2018
This is a story of a movement running parallel to the civil rights movement, the story of white flight to the suburbs in Atlanta (and other cities in the South) as a result of desegregation policies. It describes the desegregation of lunch counters, businesses, hotels, neighborhoods and schools, and depicts the resistant “white voices” in terms of their ideologies, political stances.
The scary thing is that the rhetoric of those voices are echoed, or often down right identical to, the rhetoric of conservatism in the US today. “Freedom of association”, contempt for government, and revering of privatization of government functions at least partially have their roots in the thinking that resisted the civil rights agendas of the 50s and the 60s.
One thing that stood out to me (there were many, but this is one) was the complicated or rather near impossible task of having a conference in Atlanta that involved both whites and blacks, since most hotels frequented by whites were afraid of integrating hotels to allow blacks to stay for fear of losing their white clientele.
It seems that so long as integration is not mandated, persons such as hotel and restaurant owners were at the whims of their dominant clientele, and if it preferred segregation, there would be no financial incentive to integrate. One owner confessed he would prefer the federal mandate to make the decision because then he would not be responsible for the outcome, he would just have to comply with it.
The book was angering at many levels. The slow escalation of what extents some whites were willing to go to to keep blacks out of their neighborhoods, first real estate was segregated and coded to keep segregation, then gentle threats against blacks moving into certain neighborhoods, then down right criminal violence, and finally when too many blacks pressed on the borders of a neighborhood, mass exodus of whites, lowering the prices of houses in the area... a process that feeds on itself and wrecks the home owning values of blacks who just wants to move up in society.
I think the most interesting part of the book (the one least known to me) showed how racism, overt racism has fallen out of vogue, but how policies especially targeted at blacks, are carefully phrased in language that on first glance implies no racism, but which when examined for content clearly is in place for racial reasons.
It would be interesting to read about the history of suburbia and some of the closet racism that motivated suburbia.
Anyways, the book is well researched, super detailed (took me a long time to read because the information is dense), and enlightening and candid about where race relations stood then, and where they stand now - in some ways just as divided as back then.
The scary thing is that the rhetoric of those voices are echoed, or often down right identical to, the rhetoric of conservatism in the US today. “Freedom of association”, contempt for government, and revering of privatization of government functions at least partially have their roots in the thinking that resisted the civil rights agendas of the 50s and the 60s.
One thing that stood out to me (there were many, but this is one) was the complicated or rather near impossible task of having a conference in Atlanta that involved both whites and blacks, since most hotels frequented by whites were afraid of integrating hotels to allow blacks to stay for fear of losing their white clientele.
It seems that so long as integration is not mandated, persons such as hotel and restaurant owners were at the whims of their dominant clientele, and if it preferred segregation, there would be no financial incentive to integrate. One owner confessed he would prefer the federal mandate to make the decision because then he would not be responsible for the outcome, he would just have to comply with it.
The book was angering at many levels. The slow escalation of what extents some whites were willing to go to to keep blacks out of their neighborhoods, first real estate was segregated and coded to keep segregation, then gentle threats against blacks moving into certain neighborhoods, then down right criminal violence, and finally when too many blacks pressed on the borders of a neighborhood, mass exodus of whites, lowering the prices of houses in the area... a process that feeds on itself and wrecks the home owning values of blacks who just wants to move up in society.
I think the most interesting part of the book (the one least known to me) showed how racism, overt racism has fallen out of vogue, but how policies especially targeted at blacks, are carefully phrased in language that on first glance implies no racism, but which when examined for content clearly is in place for racial reasons.
It would be interesting to read about the history of suburbia and some of the closet racism that motivated suburbia.
Anyways, the book is well researched, super detailed (took me a long time to read because the information is dense), and enlightening and candid about where race relations stood then, and where they stand now - in some ways just as divided as back then.
May 4, 2024
This book is very solid in the first several chapters but loses coherency toward the middle. Kruse describes how, following World War II, the city of Atlanta was led by a "moderate coalition" of white capitalists and a racial bloc of Black residents, with its working class under the leadership of a uniquely powerful and influential set of Black capitalists. Together, this coalition carefully managed the process of desegregation in order to attract Northern investment as firms sought more profitable opportunities down south and a steady string of Supreme Court rulings gradually struck down pillars of the segregated order that (among other things) kept Black people out of white neighborhoods and suppressed their electoral power. Primarily, they sought to limit white working-class violence of the sort that was flaring all around the region, as white southerners saw the legal foundations of white supremacy crumbling before their eyes.
Some of the best chapters of this book focus on "residential transitions" of formerly white neighborhoods. In these instances, certain white people realized it could be very profitable to sell their homes at a premium to Black people seeking higher property values and improved neighborhood amenities. This profoundly distressed their neighbors, who worried over the impact of Black neighbors on their property values. As white working-class residents, often organized by local white supremacist groups, increasingly responded with threats and violence, affluent and elite whites within the "moderate coalition" sprung into action to defuse the situation with neighborhood transition plans and coordinated property buybacks. But this could only mediate a process that could not be halted: as violence became unviable, white residents resorted to fleeing their neighborhoods en masse. As they fled, white residents also abandoned public amenities like transit, pools, and parks due to a violent allergy of even minimal social contact with Black people; once these were abandoned, they revolted against the use of "their" tax dollars to fund anything that would benefit Black residents.
These chapters outline the process of white flight in great detail at the neighborhood level. While Kruse defaults to the usual liberal dismissal of racial property value obsession as an irrational self-fulfilling prophecy, these chapters are still useful in thinking through the conflicts between the major social groups in the city, and how their self-understanding changed with the circumstances in which they found themselves. This is less true for the later chapters. When he gets to school desegregation, Kruse seems to use less detail in his descriptions of how white residents understood school desegregation as a threat -- was it similarly due to a direct concern over property values, was it about interracial social contact, or was it about the use of white tax dollars to fund education for Black students (who might one day grow up to move into their neighborhoods)? Kruse also indicates that at this juncture, some white capitalists in the "moderate coalition" began to side with the segregationists because they themselves used public schools. But he doesn't explore this conflict in any significant detail -- we never learn why specific white elites pivoted the ways they did: was it, perhaps, because of a different material relationship to segregation? In any case, school desegregation resulted in both intensified white flight and the dramatic expansion of private schools, which (for the more affluent) offered at least a temporary shield. Atlanta's public school system was abandoned en masse by whites.
Kruse's tendency to bracket white elite conflicts escalates once we get to the student boycott phase of the Civil Rights movement and the later implementation of the Civil Rights Act. He really plays up the abandonment of the moderate coalition by certain white businessmen once Black students start boycotting stores and restaurants, hurting local profits and breaking through the coalition's carefully stage-managed protests. In particular, he highlights the support given by affluent and some elite whites to Lester Maddox, a monomaniacal racist small restaurant owner, in the mayoral election over the heir to the moderate coalition, Ivan Allen Jr. But Kruse seems to overstate his case here -- the highest economic stratum of whites still overwhelmingly supported Allen.
And when the white elites who resisted the Civil Rights Act did so, they did so in the language of free markets and government non-intervention, accusing any expansion of bureaucracy of "communism". This language comes straight from the language of the national Republican party's conservative wing, which historically had minimal penetration in the South due to overwhelming Democratic dominance. The Republican Party looks like a sudden and surprising entrant in Kruse's telling, and the specific nature of the conservative forces within it is given no analysis. The fact that this market-based (some might say proto-neoliberal) ideology of privatization and the free movement of capital was never indigenous to the segregated south gives the lie to Kruse's suggestion that white flight is the origin of this ideology. Rather, white flight is the process by which working-class whites in the South learned to identify themselves with a pre-existing ideology that originated from Northern, anti-New Deal conservatives.
The book makes a partial recovery in its last chapter, where Kruse briefly outlines the long-term consequences of the "suburban secession", and (rightly) points out that it happened nationwide and was not specific to the south. One consequence has been the creation of Black-majority cities led by a new group of Black politicians, who after an initially militant "Black Power" phase pursued a new detente with white capitalists: they would push policies favorable to urban redevelopment as long as such projects came with affirmative action components that primarily benefit Black business owners and professionals (for more on this, see Adolph Reed on the "Black urban regime"). Also of note here are the ways that seemingly unrelated aspects of urban planning, including public transit and zoning policy, are manipulated by suburbanites to maintain racial segregation. Single-family zoning ensures the affluence of neighborhoods by keeping renters out and properties expensive; the limiting of public transit services to the urban core ensures that residents of the inner city, who disproportionately are too poor to own cars, have no access to jobs in the suburbs. And when all else fails, white suburbanites can always flee again: Black suburbanization through the 80s resulted in the dramatic growth of Atlanta's further-flung "exurbs".
Overall this is a well-written, useful and important book that should be taken with several grains of salt due to its gaps and omissions. Kruse is an astute analyst, but he is also still a liberal. Writing in the Bush years, he seems at pains to identify the Republican coalition with both the rich and the racists, obscuring the facts that it is only certain rich people who rely on racism, and it has overwhelmingly been the rich racists who control the behavior of the rest from above. George W. Bush's primary basis of support was always Wall Street, not Atlanta suburbanites. A "white working-class" Republican Party has a relatively recent, post-2009 crisis development. Its expression is Donald Trump, and its program is trade protectionism and a racial immigration regime, not financial speculation and white flight.
Some of the best chapters of this book focus on "residential transitions" of formerly white neighborhoods. In these instances, certain white people realized it could be very profitable to sell their homes at a premium to Black people seeking higher property values and improved neighborhood amenities. This profoundly distressed their neighbors, who worried over the impact of Black neighbors on their property values. As white working-class residents, often organized by local white supremacist groups, increasingly responded with threats and violence, affluent and elite whites within the "moderate coalition" sprung into action to defuse the situation with neighborhood transition plans and coordinated property buybacks. But this could only mediate a process that could not be halted: as violence became unviable, white residents resorted to fleeing their neighborhoods en masse. As they fled, white residents also abandoned public amenities like transit, pools, and parks due to a violent allergy of even minimal social contact with Black people; once these were abandoned, they revolted against the use of "their" tax dollars to fund anything that would benefit Black residents.
These chapters outline the process of white flight in great detail at the neighborhood level. While Kruse defaults to the usual liberal dismissal of racial property value obsession as an irrational self-fulfilling prophecy, these chapters are still useful in thinking through the conflicts between the major social groups in the city, and how their self-understanding changed with the circumstances in which they found themselves. This is less true for the later chapters. When he gets to school desegregation, Kruse seems to use less detail in his descriptions of how white residents understood school desegregation as a threat -- was it similarly due to a direct concern over property values, was it about interracial social contact, or was it about the use of white tax dollars to fund education for Black students (who might one day grow up to move into their neighborhoods)? Kruse also indicates that at this juncture, some white capitalists in the "moderate coalition" began to side with the segregationists because they themselves used public schools. But he doesn't explore this conflict in any significant detail -- we never learn why specific white elites pivoted the ways they did: was it, perhaps, because of a different material relationship to segregation? In any case, school desegregation resulted in both intensified white flight and the dramatic expansion of private schools, which (for the more affluent) offered at least a temporary shield. Atlanta's public school system was abandoned en masse by whites.
Kruse's tendency to bracket white elite conflicts escalates once we get to the student boycott phase of the Civil Rights movement and the later implementation of the Civil Rights Act. He really plays up the abandonment of the moderate coalition by certain white businessmen once Black students start boycotting stores and restaurants, hurting local profits and breaking through the coalition's carefully stage-managed protests. In particular, he highlights the support given by affluent and some elite whites to Lester Maddox, a monomaniacal racist small restaurant owner, in the mayoral election over the heir to the moderate coalition, Ivan Allen Jr. But Kruse seems to overstate his case here -- the highest economic stratum of whites still overwhelmingly supported Allen.
And when the white elites who resisted the Civil Rights Act did so, they did so in the language of free markets and government non-intervention, accusing any expansion of bureaucracy of "communism". This language comes straight from the language of the national Republican party's conservative wing, which historically had minimal penetration in the South due to overwhelming Democratic dominance. The Republican Party looks like a sudden and surprising entrant in Kruse's telling, and the specific nature of the conservative forces within it is given no analysis. The fact that this market-based (some might say proto-neoliberal) ideology of privatization and the free movement of capital was never indigenous to the segregated south gives the lie to Kruse's suggestion that white flight is the origin of this ideology. Rather, white flight is the process by which working-class whites in the South learned to identify themselves with a pre-existing ideology that originated from Northern, anti-New Deal conservatives.
The book makes a partial recovery in its last chapter, where Kruse briefly outlines the long-term consequences of the "suburban secession", and (rightly) points out that it happened nationwide and was not specific to the south. One consequence has been the creation of Black-majority cities led by a new group of Black politicians, who after an initially militant "Black Power" phase pursued a new detente with white capitalists: they would push policies favorable to urban redevelopment as long as such projects came with affirmative action components that primarily benefit Black business owners and professionals (for more on this, see Adolph Reed on the "Black urban regime"). Also of note here are the ways that seemingly unrelated aspects of urban planning, including public transit and zoning policy, are manipulated by suburbanites to maintain racial segregation. Single-family zoning ensures the affluence of neighborhoods by keeping renters out and properties expensive; the limiting of public transit services to the urban core ensures that residents of the inner city, who disproportionately are too poor to own cars, have no access to jobs in the suburbs. And when all else fails, white suburbanites can always flee again: Black suburbanization through the 80s resulted in the dramatic growth of Atlanta's further-flung "exurbs".
Overall this is a well-written, useful and important book that should be taken with several grains of salt due to its gaps and omissions. Kruse is an astute analyst, but he is also still a liberal. Writing in the Bush years, he seems at pains to identify the Republican coalition with both the rich and the racists, obscuring the facts that it is only certain rich people who rely on racism, and it has overwhelmingly been the rich racists who control the behavior of the rest from above. George W. Bush's primary basis of support was always Wall Street, not Atlanta suburbanites. A "white working-class" Republican Party has a relatively recent, post-2009 crisis development. Its expression is Donald Trump, and its program is trade protectionism and a racial immigration regime, not financial speculation and white flight.
March 10, 2019
Scholarly, but readable, account of the integration of elections, housing, public accommodations, and schools in Atlanta in the 1940's through 1960's. Due to a minimalist approach to compliance with civil rights laws that was developed by the white power structure and accepted by black business and religious leaders, Atlanta avoided the initial violent response to federal edicts that was common elsewhere in the South, and gained the sobriquet of the "city too busy to hate." The author shows, through detailed case studies and profiles of prominent figures among the black and white "old guard," the ever-present segregationist resistance, and the more militant young blacks who rose to the fore to protest the slow pace of meaningful reform, that this flattering slogan never captured the complexity of Atlantans' response to integration mandates. He portrays a dynamic in which white resistance never faded, but instead re-manifested itself in what he calls "suburban secession" -- the mass migration of segregationist whites to separately incorporated suburban communities in which they could enforce black exclusion without directly violating civil rights edicts. Their methods included restrictive zoning, rejection of mass transit that would connect their municipalities with downtown Atlanta, prevention of annexation by the city, control of their own public housing authorities, and political gerrymandering. The re-segregation created in this way persists to this day. The book is insightful, well written and thoroughly documented. A very interesting read.
April 24, 2019
A deep dive into the politics of the struggle between integration and segregation in Atlanta, primarily focusing on the postwar period until the late 1960s, as a means of documenting the development of arguments and ideologies now at the heart of the American political conservative movement.
The author lets the primary source documents, interviews, newspaper articles, and speeches do the heavy lifting. He sets up the story by establishing the political realities of the area at the time: state government controlled by the poor whites of the rural areas, but the city as run by a coalition of wealthy whites, white moderates, the business community, and the leaders of the black community in opposition to the poor white population. He documents how Atlanta's governing coalition attempted to negotiate the federal demands for integration in such a way as to be voluntary, to cause as little unrest as possible, and to satisfy the minimum of the federal standards without entirely dismantling segregation. The author makes it clear that almost all the white people throughout remained committed champions of segregation; the difference was that some saw that it was going to be inevitably broken down and was going to be bad for business, and others clung to it firmly. The author then describes the flashpoints of disruption in good order: the processes by which neighborhoods transitioned from all white to mostly black, and how attempts to keep neighborhoods white involved contrived conceptions of community and ultimately fell apart when the economic incentives of the individual homeowner overruled what might be seen as optimal by the whole community; how public parks and areas would follow in their transition from white spaces to black spaces; the contest regarding integration of schools, and how for years integration was frustrated by restrictions on numbers of black students allowed into mostly white schools, and the processes by which a school at risk of integration would experience white flight. The author demonstrates how all of these things were considered problematic by many white people who were convinced their way of life would be irreparably lost if segregation were dismantled, and fought against it bitterly.
The author then documented the collapse of the moderate white - business - black community coalition in the wake of the sit-ins and the next generation of civil rights leaders in the early 1960s. The coalition was completely against it: white businessmen did not want integration of business forced on them by law or by pressure, and older black leaders felt the younger ones were pushing too much and too hard. The sit-ins and pressure on businesses happened anyway, and business owners found relief on the basis of the passage of the Civil Rights Act, now having the government to "blame" for them being "forced" to integrate their stores and spaces.
The author's primary concern is to plot the changes in argumentation and the process of white flight: segregationist arguments began in their naked white supremacist forms, including aggression by KKK members, house bombings, threats and acts of violence, etc., and when these became less popular, how the movement shifted to start focusing on matters of "freedom of association," federal restrictions on freedom and government interference in business, and the merits of the "free market." He documents how these latter arguments would end up becoming more ascendant and acceptable to a wider range of white people as the Civil Rights movement gained momentum. He also demonstrates how white people would rather give up on an area rather than see true integration, and identifies this desire for segregated space as the primary driver for the white flight out of Atlanta and the development of the outer suburbs over this entire period.
He then identified these suburban areas as the new power center for the more finessed segregationist arguments of "free association" and "free markets" and the demonization of the federal government, and federal intervention, on account of its imposition of integration in the cities of the American South. He demonstrates powerfully how in defeat these segregationist arguments gained even more strength than they had before: he chronicled how one of the champions against business integration ended up becoming the governor of Georgia. He concludes by charting the massive party realignment of the 1970s and 1980s and how the Republican party in the South wholeheartedly embraced the previously segregationist arguments of free association, free markets, and the demonization of the work of the federal government in terms of intervention in people's lives and their decisions, as well as the demonization of federal programs for the poor as handouts for unworthy and lazy people, exploiting common stereotypes about certain kinds of black people. He points out how so many of these arguments gained great prominence at the hands of Republican representatives from the Atlanta suburbs, primarily in the form of Newt Gingrich, and how they continue to dominate political discourse in America.
The author does emphasize that many today may use arguments about free association, free markets, skepticism of federal government intervention, and live within suburbs without being segregationists or white supremacists. Nevertheless, it is very eye opening to see how these arguments were absolutely firmly rooted in the desire of white Southerners to preserve a fully segregated society, and to do so without regard to the experience and deprivation it would cause for black people. It would cast modern conservative arguments regarding concerns about businesses serving gay people or other forms of sexual minorities in a very unflattering light, since those arguments are precisely the same as used by white segregationists to justify their continued discrimination against black people.
The author's thesis will probably not be very convincing for those who are inclined to be skeptical of it, but it's hard to argue with the depth of exploration of the primary sources. If nothing else, the work is worthy of consideration to be forced to confront the ugliness inherent in those primary sources, and as a reminder that while these events took place in the past, they are too recent to believe they do not continue to have influence on the present.
The author lets the primary source documents, interviews, newspaper articles, and speeches do the heavy lifting. He sets up the story by establishing the political realities of the area at the time: state government controlled by the poor whites of the rural areas, but the city as run by a coalition of wealthy whites, white moderates, the business community, and the leaders of the black community in opposition to the poor white population. He documents how Atlanta's governing coalition attempted to negotiate the federal demands for integration in such a way as to be voluntary, to cause as little unrest as possible, and to satisfy the minimum of the federal standards without entirely dismantling segregation. The author makes it clear that almost all the white people throughout remained committed champions of segregation; the difference was that some saw that it was going to be inevitably broken down and was going to be bad for business, and others clung to it firmly. The author then describes the flashpoints of disruption in good order: the processes by which neighborhoods transitioned from all white to mostly black, and how attempts to keep neighborhoods white involved contrived conceptions of community and ultimately fell apart when the economic incentives of the individual homeowner overruled what might be seen as optimal by the whole community; how public parks and areas would follow in their transition from white spaces to black spaces; the contest regarding integration of schools, and how for years integration was frustrated by restrictions on numbers of black students allowed into mostly white schools, and the processes by which a school at risk of integration would experience white flight. The author demonstrates how all of these things were considered problematic by many white people who were convinced their way of life would be irreparably lost if segregation were dismantled, and fought against it bitterly.
The author then documented the collapse of the moderate white - business - black community coalition in the wake of the sit-ins and the next generation of civil rights leaders in the early 1960s. The coalition was completely against it: white businessmen did not want integration of business forced on them by law or by pressure, and older black leaders felt the younger ones were pushing too much and too hard. The sit-ins and pressure on businesses happened anyway, and business owners found relief on the basis of the passage of the Civil Rights Act, now having the government to "blame" for them being "forced" to integrate their stores and spaces.
The author's primary concern is to plot the changes in argumentation and the process of white flight: segregationist arguments began in their naked white supremacist forms, including aggression by KKK members, house bombings, threats and acts of violence, etc., and when these became less popular, how the movement shifted to start focusing on matters of "freedom of association," federal restrictions on freedom and government interference in business, and the merits of the "free market." He documents how these latter arguments would end up becoming more ascendant and acceptable to a wider range of white people as the Civil Rights movement gained momentum. He also demonstrates how white people would rather give up on an area rather than see true integration, and identifies this desire for segregated space as the primary driver for the white flight out of Atlanta and the development of the outer suburbs over this entire period.
He then identified these suburban areas as the new power center for the more finessed segregationist arguments of "free association" and "free markets" and the demonization of the federal government, and federal intervention, on account of its imposition of integration in the cities of the American South. He demonstrates powerfully how in defeat these segregationist arguments gained even more strength than they had before: he chronicled how one of the champions against business integration ended up becoming the governor of Georgia. He concludes by charting the massive party realignment of the 1970s and 1980s and how the Republican party in the South wholeheartedly embraced the previously segregationist arguments of free association, free markets, and the demonization of the work of the federal government in terms of intervention in people's lives and their decisions, as well as the demonization of federal programs for the poor as handouts for unworthy and lazy people, exploiting common stereotypes about certain kinds of black people. He points out how so many of these arguments gained great prominence at the hands of Republican representatives from the Atlanta suburbs, primarily in the form of Newt Gingrich, and how they continue to dominate political discourse in America.
The author does emphasize that many today may use arguments about free association, free markets, skepticism of federal government intervention, and live within suburbs without being segregationists or white supremacists. Nevertheless, it is very eye opening to see how these arguments were absolutely firmly rooted in the desire of white Southerners to preserve a fully segregated society, and to do so without regard to the experience and deprivation it would cause for black people. It would cast modern conservative arguments regarding concerns about businesses serving gay people or other forms of sexual minorities in a very unflattering light, since those arguments are precisely the same as used by white segregationists to justify their continued discrimination against black people.
The author's thesis will probably not be very convincing for those who are inclined to be skeptical of it, but it's hard to argue with the depth of exploration of the primary sources. If nothing else, the work is worthy of consideration to be forced to confront the ugliness inherent in those primary sources, and as a reminder that while these events took place in the past, they are too recent to believe they do not continue to have influence on the present.
February 8, 2017
While Atlanta in the post-WW II years portrayed itself as "the city too busy to hate," willing to take moderate, reasonable steps toward integration, Kruse shows that there was no shortage of hate. While business and civic leaders saw advantages to taking baby steps, the white working-class saw themselves sold out by people whose private schools and private clubs would never have to accept blacks. After neo-Nazis and the KKK tried taking a stand, segregationists rebranded with the euphemistic "freedom of association" — meaning they didn't want to be around blacks, so all public spaces (parks, buses, sports fields, schools) should stay whites only. When segregation crumbled anyway, angry whites fled the city core for segregated suburbs. Kruse argues they also adopted the core attitudes that would define later conservatives — resentment of blacks, distrust of government, hatred of tax money going to public infrastructure (as that would benefit Those People) more. Depressing but very good.
May 11, 2008
Though this book is advertised as explaining how modern American conservatism's roots lie in the segregationist movement, it's mostly just a history of the civil rights movement in Atlanta with a focus on the demographics of each side. Kruse does compellingly compare the rhetoric of middle-class segregationists with the rhetoric of Contract-with-America-style secessionists, and frequently makes the point that the segregationist response to enforced integration was often to abandon the integrated area, but he doesn't explain the rise of conservatism in areas that never were and still aren't integrated. That's not to say the book isn't a good read; it's well written and the details of Atlanta's struggles to integrate are fascinating. But don't expect a polemic on the roots of modern conservatism -- you're really just getting the story of Atlanta.
June 18, 2022
Kruse does an incredible job in the latter half of the book, describing how the fight for segregation in the metropolitan area of Atlanta set up a subtle and, ultimately, rather successful push by the Republican party for segregated suburbs in the decades to follow. That said, the first half is mired in the details, literally describing how specific streets or even houses exchanged hands between white families and black families. When he's discussing power alliances, politics, and ramifications, Kruse truly excels. Unfortunately, he gets lost in the details a few too many times, and makes reading the text more awkward than it should be.
April 14, 2020
Ah, now I definitively know why I had a fear of suburbia growing up and why I still fucking hate it. Kruse lays out and structures his argument well, using each chapter to explore a facet in the white upper and middle class anxieties and fears in response to the African American flight from the rural South to urban centers. They created a variety of systems including red lining in real estate groups, refusal to desegregate schools, and defunding public programs that in turn lower property and prestige values to impoverish the "other".
July 13, 2025
Very detailed, well-researched and depressing. For me, it clarified a connection between American car culture and American racism. People moving to the suburbs, using personal automobiles to commute each day, refusing to fund mass transit. I thought it was due to poor planning and corporate greed. But a lot of it seems to be based on individuals deciding that they don’t want to have anything to do with “those people”. So sad. Where is our sense of community?
November 24, 2019
Fantastic as usual (Kruse's history is consistently accessible and relevant). A timely read for 2019, this book speaks to how conservatism got to where it is today: a largely white movement, located in the suburbs, and deeply invested in the idea of undoing and minimizing government .
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September 30, 2015Really interesting study of White Flight in Atlanta, a good complement to Sugrue.
April 10, 2024
Essential American reading
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