African American Suburban Development in Atlanta

• Main Author: Andrew Wiese
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Emory Center for Digital Scholarship 2006-09-01
• Series: Southern Spaces
• Subjects: African American Studies; Politics and Government; Residential; Urban and Suburban Studies; @Emory; Atlanta Studies
• Online Access: https://southernspaces.org/node/42369

One of the most striking developments in recent southern history has been the pace and scale of African American suburbanization. Delving into the history of black organizations, civic politics, race-based policies, class economics and neighborhood formation, Andrew Wiese examines the circumstances and motives accompanying African American suburban development in Atlanta from the early 1950s until the early twenty-first century. In his discussion of the Candler-McAfee neighborhood in south Dekalb County, Prof. Wiese considers how race and class have influenced the community as well as the landscape. Racial discrimination applied to the places where most African Americans live remains the most significant basis for persistent racial inequality. Southern suburbia proves to be in step with, if not at the cutting edge of, trends in African American residential patterns writ large across the country.