White Flight Video

This is a video of white people living in Atlanta that feel the need to move to the suburbs because of the influx of African Americans. MARTA is one of the main reasons for this “white flight” to the suburbs. In fact, the reason why residents of Gwinnett, Cobb, and Clayton voted against MARTA was not based on transportation issues but referendums of race. Their sole purpose was to keep the races apart. According to the Atlanta Magazine, the 1960 census counted approximately 300,000 white residents in Atlanta. From 1960 to 1980, around 160,000 whites left the city - Atlanta’s white population was cut in half over two decades (Monroe, Doug). White people were fleeing the city as the black population swelled during the civil rights era. The failure of the 1971 referendum in Gwinnett, Cobb, and Clayton counties marked the beginning of Atlanta’s transportation problems because of the lack of mass transit in the suburbs. The highway that is now called the Downtown Connector was first designed to run right through the headquarters of the Atlanta Life Insurance Company, the city’s major black-owned business (Monroe, Doug). Even 1-20 West was proposed to be the “boundary between white and Negro communities” (Monroe, Doug). In fact, it is a trend for Georgia transportation policies to aid the automobile commutes of mostly white residents, while service cuts at MARTA have hurt African Americans living in low-income areas. However, these strategies did not work as whites left the city by the thousands. Today, MARTA’s racial makeup is mostly African American and there are still issues with race today. Gwinnett County recently rejected MARTA’s referendum for a third time, but the reason is still unclear. Residents claim they did not want to pay a higher sales tax while others claim it would lead to an increase in crime. However, this has always been the case for Gwinnett residents even in 1987 when MARTA had hopes to expand for a second time. According to a book by Kevin Kruse on “white flight” in Atlanta, the white chairman of MARTA noted in 1987 that the opposition to public transit has been 90 percent a racial issue. Bumper stickers could even be found with the slogan, “Share Atlanta Crime- Vote MARTA.” Suburbanites still fear expanding MARTA will bring inner-city residents, which are mostly African American, and violence to the suburbs. The decade-old derogatory saying, “Moving Africans Rapidly Through Atlanta,” that began as a joke in the 70s due to the low number of white riders, still prevails today. 

Works Cited: 

WSB- TV (Television Station: Atlanta, Ga.), “White Flight From Atlanta; Open Housing Coalition Calls For Change In Attitudes,” English 1102 Fall 2019, accessed November 19, 2019, http://mapping-nature.org/omeka2019/admin/items/show/8.

Monroe, Doug. “Where It All Went Wrong.” The Atlanta Magazine, August 1, 2012, https://www.atlantamagazine.com/great-reads/marta-tsplost-transportation/