William A. Link. Atlanta, Cradle of the New South: Race and Remembering in the Civil War's Aftermath. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013. 264 pp. $34.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-4696-0776-4.

Reviewed by John D. Metz
Published on H-SHGAPE (April, 2015)
Commissioned by K. Stephen Prince (University of South Florida)

A Tale of Two Cities: Contested Visions of Atlanta’s Past and Future following the Civil War

The recent deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner at the hands of police and the protests that followed reveal how much the United States continues to struggle with racial inequality. The present state of racial dynamics provides special relevance to William Link’s book, Atlanta, Cradle of the New South: Race and Remembering in the Civil War’s Aftermath. In it, Link explores the rise of the Phoenix City from the devastation of the Battle of Atlanta in 1864, describing its transition into the archetypal city of the New South, hailed for its energy, industry, and racial harmony. The struggles of African Americans in Atlanta as they adapted to freedom, he argues, reflect a pattern of race relations that developed throughout the post-Reconstruction South.

Meticulously researched, Link’s narrative reveals conflicting efforts within Atlanta’s white and black communities to redefine history in terms relevant to their respective experiences and aspirations. White boosters worked to cleanse popular memory of the Civil War as a struggle over slavery, focusing instead on a theme of rebirth, harmony, and progress. African Americans moved from the countryside to the city to escape dependence and persecution. Theyembraced their freedom by creating the institutions and community networks necessary to develop black cultural, economic, and political power. These achievements would establish Atlanta as a center of black America in the twentieth century.

Link’s story highlights a series of carefully selected characters and events to emphasize broader and more pervasive social and economic themes. While he focuses too long on General William Tecumseh Sherman’s actions in Atlanta in 1864, Link achieves greater balance discussing other episodes. He discusses the Freedmen’s Bureau in Georgia, for example, to emphasize the mixed results of Reconstruction. Fred Mosebach’s arrival in 1867 as the head of the Atlanta office marked the advent of Radical Reconstruction, when efforts switched from monitoring labor contracts to imposing equal rights and full enfranchisement for freed people through military rule. While these efforts created a safer haven for African American settlement, they also promoted white supremacy in response to what was popularly perceived as the imposition of “Negro rule” through federal occupation. Likewise, the assassination of Republican leader George W. Ashburn in 1868 signaled the rise of political violence in opposition to Reconstruction. For many white Georgians, the trial in Atlanta of Ashburn’s assailants was viewed as a Radical conspiracy and it transformed the victim into the villain and his murderers into heroes.

Violence and intimidation were common early in Reconstruction, yet so too were efforts to improve the lives of African Americans. Of particular interest is Link’s discussion of the American Missionary Association’s (AMA) work to educate emancipated slaves, “liberated through literacy,” to create advocates for racial equality (pp. 112-113). Working with the Freedmen’s Bureau, the AMA established 199 schools for blacks in Georgia by 1869. The AMA focused its support on the creation of black colleges once a statewide common-school system was created in the late 1860s incorporating black schools. Atlanta University, chartered in 1867 as one of the seven black colleges established by the AMA between 1866 and 1869, was racially integrated and committed to promoting black intellectual equality. Link argues that southern whites “vastly underestimated the subversive impact” of these efforts, particularly the influence of the university in promoting black education and leadership (p. 123). These efforts were especially effective once the university added black faculty in the late 1890s, including W. E. B. DuBois, who taught there from 1897 to 1910.

Link convincingly shows the increasing tension between competing visions of race through the fairs held to promote Atlanta between 1870 and 1900. Henry W. Grady brought Sherman to Atlanta in 1879 as part of a marketing scheme to transform the city’s destroyer into its greatest proponent. Sherman embraced the message of rebirth and harmony and worked to attract northern interest in the International Cotton Exposition of 1881. The exposition even hosted a Freedmen’s Day where prominent black leaders hailed the achievements of African Americans since the Civil War, prompting interest in holding a black world’s fair in Atlanta in the future. While black leaders worked tirelessly over the next decade promoting the idea, they could not make the dream a reality. Despite this, their efforts revealed the impressive power and influence of Atlanta’s African American leaders. The choice of Booker T. Washington to deliver the opening speech at Cotton States International Exposition of 1895 signaled the growing influence of southern black leaders, yet his speech became known as the Atlanta Compromise for its plea for white tolerance in exchange for black acquiescence. Warmly received by most whites, Washington’s message created a rift among black leaders forced to choose between continuing the fight for equal rights or settling for peace and toleration at a higher social and political cost.

Tensions broke on September 22, 1906, when Atlanta erupted in four days of racial violence resulting from unsubstantiated rumors of the rape of white women by black men. White vigilantes descended on African American neighborhoods, and the residents resisted fiercely. Police did little to stop the vigilantes, but the state militia was called in to suppress black resistance to them. The riot left two whites and an unknown number of African Americans dead. Link’s epilogue discusses Margaret Mitchell’s recollection of the 1906 riot upon the release of her novel Gone with the Wind in 1936. While her story of freed slaves manipulated by unscrupulous northerners resonated with the audience of its time, African Americans including Dubois and John Hope, who oversaw the merger of Atlanta's five black colleges into a single university, continued the struggle for equality, producing the leaders who would continue the fight for civil rights in the 1950s and 1960s. Ultimately, Link’s book is a well-crafted study well worth the attention of those interested in the early dynamics of race relations.

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Citation: John D. Metz. Review of Link, William A., Atlanta, Cradle of the New South: Race and Remembering in the Civil War's Aftermath. H-SHGAPE, H-Net Reviews. April, 2015.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=39648

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