The Black Mecca 50 Years Later

By Kenya King and M. Alexis Scott

Atlanta has been considered a black mecca for decades — a city where African Americans reputedly have the best chance to thrive. Now, 50 years after the March on Washington and Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, it's a good time to ask what black Atlanta has actually achieved.

As usual, the answer comes in shades of gray. While some black Atlantans have achieved wealth and renown, others haven't yet broken through the barriers standing in the way of even modest success.

On the bright side

Among the believers is Herman J. Russell, chairman and founder of H.J. Russell and Company, a 50-year-old construction and real estate empire based in Atlanta that Russell launched from scratch at age 16. "No doubt about it. Atlanta is still the anchor for black entrepreneurs," he says. It is "one of the greatest cities in the world for black-owned businesses." 

Another booster is Carlton E. Brown, president of Clark Atlanta University, the only independent graduate institution in the network of historically black colleges and universities.

Brown agrees that education continues to play a key role in bringing people to Atlanta, noting, too, that large corporations from all over the world visit his university to scout for employees. "The range of talent that arrives here is very, very strong," he says. Of the 100,000 college students in the city now, some 26 percent are African American.

Another plus: Atlanta has a long tradition as a center of black culture — going back to the 1920s. "I think when people come here they find progressive-minded people," says Bernice A. King, a daughter of Martin Luther King and CEO of the King Center. "They find a hodgepodge of creative and gifted individuals who are doing substantial stuff."

Nationally known artists have participated for years in music, art, and other cultural festivals going back as far as the Negro Pavilion of the 1895 Cotton States Exposition at Atlanta's Piedmont Park. The Atlanta-based National Black Arts Festival celebrated its 25th anniversary last year.

Also, she notes, "there are a number of African Americans in important places in leadership, although we still have a great deal of work to do in terms of power, leveraging true power in Atlanta."

Black mayors have headed the city since the 1970s; the city's planning director is black, and so, too, are the president of the Atlanta city council and the chairs of the two counties in which the city is located: Fulton and DeKalb.

By the numbers

And yet, more than 40 years after King made strides to improve the social, political, and economic conditions for the nation's poor, Atlanta continues to face many challenges.

On the one hand, educational and job opportunities have historically drawn African Americans to the Bible Belt South. Blacks have made up more than half the city's population since 1970, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The city's current population of 420,000 is 54 percent black and 38 percent white. And while it is true that the city's percentage of black residents has dropped since its high of 67.1 percent in 1990, that has happened because African Americans have moved into the surrounding suburbs. They now make up about one-third of the metro area's total population of 5.4 million, according to 2013 estimates from the Nielsen Company.

Some 518,734 blacks moved to the metropolitan Atlanta area between 2000 and 2010, the largest net gain of any racial or ethnic group, according to U.S. Census Bureau reports.

Other census figures tell a more detailed story. For example, 2010 census figures for Atlanta's 25 neighborhood planning units reveal several key facts about Atlanta's neighborhoods: 60 percent of the city's area consists of overwhelmingly black neighborhoods. Together, Northwest, Southwest, and Southeast Atlanta are 92 percent black. Some areas are predominantly white, notably Buckhead and Northeast Atlanta.

Household income also mirrors these distinctions between north side and south side neighborhoods. In 2009, Atlanta's median household income was $49,777, while it was $32,584 for blacks and $51,861 for whites, according to the census.

Newcomer's new realities

Visual artist and popular event host Charlie Vaughn of New Orleans, who migrated to Atlanta after Hurricane Katrina, says his six-year experience in Atlanta was "split down the middle." Vaughn arrived in Atlanta in 2005, unmarried and with few resources. A few years later, he had a wife, a house, stable employment, and two children. He says that he tried to stay in Atlanta and was grateful for the people he met, but it just didn't work out for him.

Trouble came at the start. He was accosted by police within a week of his arrival, and that kept on happening once or twice a month. While he did not say the incidents were due to racial profiling, it certainly did not make him feel welcomed. Living in Douglasville, some 23 miles west of Atlanta, and working until near midnight in Marietta, about 20 miles northwest of the city, was not ideal for Vaughn. The long commute was wearing.

He applied for 15 different jobs before landing one at the Sheraton Galleria; several potential employers turned him down because they worried about his New Orleans address. "Atlanta is supposed to be the black man's mecca, the place of new opportunities, second chances, but [I didn't get] a break out there. You're in a place that's wide open, but you still feel closed in," Vaughn says.

Vaughn took his family back to New Orleans in 2011 and is now "making more progress than he did in Atlanta," he says. He opened events for major artists at the 2012 Essence Music Festival and is the owner of UptownArtwerx.

Tough times

Vaughn wasn't the only one struggling. The recession certainly took its toll on many. During 2010, a bleak year for the unemployed, 15.7 percent of the city's African American workforce didn't have a job, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Meanwhile, the jobless rate for all races was 10.1 percent. So the figure for blacks was more than 55 percent higher than the overall municipal rate. At that time, the nationwide black unemployment rate was 16 percent, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, while the overall rate was 9.6 percent.

Of the 100 largest American cities, Atlanta had the fourth highest private-sector job losses from September 2007 through September 2011, according to an analysis of data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

The region has been slow to recover, with 8.7 percent of the Atlanta area unemployed as of August 2013. The national average was 7.3 percent at the time.

Boosters

Businessman and entrepreneur Tommy Dortch, who is CEO of TWD, Inc. and founder of the National Black College Alumni Hall of Fame, says that despite Atlanta's challenges, it is still one of the best places for African Americans to succeed. Based on that alone, he says, one has to call Atlanta the number one black mecca in the nation.

Part of the reason may be that Atlanta has had an African American mayor for nearly 40 years, starting with Maynard Holbrook Jackson in 1974.

"There is not another city in this nation that has [Atlanta's] commitment to diversity and inclusion," Dortch says. African Americans get 38 to 40 percent of all the procurement opportunities in the city, making it tops in the nation, he adds.

That is a result of a policy put in place in the 1970s by Mayor Jackson, who mandated minority participation in all city contracts. The policy is still in place.

"We've done almost $6 billion in the expansion of Hartsfield-Jackson [airport]. One billion of that six [billion] has gone to African American-owned businesses. There is not another city that can touch that," says Dortch.

Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed agrees. "Atlanta has an undeniable legacy and long-standing tradition of supporting urban entrepreneurs. Many of the world's greatest business ideas and ventures started here in Atlanta, which was named by Forbes magazine as the No. 1 city in the U.S. for minority entrepreneurs," says Reed. Examples include H.J. Russell and Company and Bronner Brothers, among others.

"That's a sign that opportunities for emerging urban entrepreneurs and women and minority-owned businesses in Atlanta remain unparalleled," he adds. 

Nuanced views

Marshawn Evans, owner of ME Unlimited, a personal empowerment company that focuses on brand identity and peak performance, moved to Atlanta in 2001 for its job prospects, cost of living, and quality of life. It also has a thriving media market — something that's rare outside of New York and Los Angeles.

"It was a city where you could see yourself growing, creating your own direction; that's what really drew me here," Evans says. She also considers Atlanta a good place to live irrespective of ethnicity. "I see a lot of people from a lot of different cultures from around the world that thrive here in Atlanta."

That gibes with Atlanta's reputation for welcoming diversity and people of all backgrounds. Once primarily a black and white town, metro Atlanta now boasts about its ethnic diversity, with a population that is 52 percent white, 31 percent black, almost 11 percent Latino, and nearly five percent Asian. Other ethnic groups are drawn to the area because they have seen the success of its black population.

Does all this prove that Atlanta is a black mecca? Or is there another ingredient?

The last word may come from James Bronner, one of the second-generation owners of the world-renowned Bronner Brothers, among the nation's biggest private African American hair and skin care producers, now in its 66th year of operation.

Bronner recalls how friends who moved to other places continue to view Atlanta as a great place for opportunity. That's true, he says, "but you still have to work hard and be excellent at what you do in order to make it in Atlanta." Success, he says, "is not just a shoo-in."

Kenya King is a professional writer and communications manager at Georgia State University. M. Alexis Scott is a native of Atlanta and the third-generation publisher of Atlanta Daily World, where a version of this article first appeared. See www.atlantadailyworld.com.