THE POLITICS OF ATLANTA’S PUBLIC HOUSING: RACE, PLANNING, AND INCLUSION, 1936-1975 By AKIRA DRAKE A dissertation submitted to the Graduate School – New Brunswick Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey In partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in Planning and Public Policy Written under the direction of James DeFilippis And approved by New Brunswick, New Jersey MAY, 2014 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION The Politics of Atlanta’s Public Housing: Race, Planning, and Inclusion, 1936-1975 By AKIRA DRAKE Dissertation Director: James DeFilippis The purpose of this research is threefold: to theorize the political viability of the public housing development as a political opportunity structure; to understand the creation, marginalization, and demolition of this political opportunity structure in Atlanta; and to explicate the movements from within the public housing development that translated to a more empowered residential base, and more livable communities in Atlanta, GA between the 1936 and 1975. The literature on the positive productive functions of public housing is interspersed within the literature on the politics of public housing policies (at the national level), the politics of public housing developments (at the local level), the production of a racial geography in the City of Atlanta, and the productive functions of welfare institutions (including, but not limited to, public housing developments). Further, this project attempts to understand empirical benefits of political opportunity structures, particularly as it relates to low-income and minority housing movements in the city of Atlanta. Theoretically, political opportunity structures provide a neutral platform for low-income city dwellers that have historically been denied the legal means to challenge neighborhood change, and participate in formal urban political processes ii and institutions. In fact, low-income groups have routinely been uprooted from their neighborhoods, contained to specific areas of the city, while those of greater means invoke a litany of legal obstructions (from restrictive covenants to lot size requirements) to prevent the free movement of low-income residents. Thus, political opportunity structures that are permanently housed in low-income and minority neighborhoods are the theoretical response to the disparities in political opportunity and collective efficacy between socioeconomic groups in the city. Using the case study examples of University Homes, Perry Homes, and Grady Homes, this dissertation examines the uses of public housing developments in Atlanta as political opportunity structures for low-income and working-class African- Americans from 1936 to 1975. The research uses a historical methodology of data collection to create a grounded theory of racial politics in the city, as well as to analyze the production of equitable outcomes and processes in the urban planning process through public housing developments. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract……….…….………………………………………………………………………………………………ii Chapter 1 Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………………….1 Chapter 2 Black Political Forums in Atlanta: Public Housing Developments as Political Opportunity Structures……………………………………………………………………………42 Chapter 3 University Homes: Creating a Political Opportunity Structure from the Top- Down………………………………………………………………………………………………………83 Chapter 4 Perry Homes: The Northwest Advocates……………………………………………...…128 Chapter 5 Grady Homes: Institutionalizing Radical Responses to Urban Politics in the South…………………………………………………………………………………………………….169 Chapter 6 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………………….210 Bibliography…….…………………………………………………………………………………………….236 iv LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Map 2.1: Percent of Population African American by Census Tract, 1940…………….53 Map 2.2: Percent of Population African American by Census Tract, 1950…………….54 Map 2.3: Percent of Population African American by Census Tract, 1960…………….55 Map 2.4: Percent of Population African American by Census Tract, 1970…………….56 Map 2.5: Locations of Atlanta Public Housing Developments Constructed 1936- 1957……………………………………………………………………………………………………….……..….59 Map 2.6: Location of Atlanta’s Urban Renewal Projects and Percent of Population African American by Census Tract, 1960……………………………………………….63 Table 2.1: Description of Atlanta Urban Renewal Program Projects, by Year………...65 Figure 2.1: Organizational Capacity of Tenant Associations………………………………….78 Table 3.1: January 1937 Proposed Rent Schedule for University Homes Units…….109 Figure 4.1: Perry Homes Site Plan……………………………………………………………………..143 Figure 4.2: Bureau of Planning Vacant Area Analysis (ca. 1960)…………………………147 Table 4.1: Estimated African-American Housing Needs, 1959-1963……………………148 Table 4.2: Estimated Land Requirements for African-American Housing, 1959- 1963…………………………………………………………………………………………………..149 Table 4.3: Services Provided by the City of Atlanta…………………………………………….156 Table 4.4: Services Provided by Fulton County…………………………………………………..156 Table 4.5: Services Provided by both the City of Atlanta and Fulton County………..156 Map 5.1: Atlanta’s Major Interstates………………………………………………………………….182 Table 6.1: Changes in Population by Race in Atlanta, 1950-1958………………………..225 v Table 6.2: Changes in Occupied Dwelling Units by Race in Atlanta, 1950-1958……225 Table 6.3: Distribution of Residential Land by Race in Atlanta, 1958…………………..225 vi 1 Chapter 1: Introduction On September 29, 1934, Secretary Howard Ickes of the United States Department of the Interior, spoke in front of hundreds at Atlanta’s Spelman College campus for the inauguration of the nation’s first federally-sponsored slum clearance and public housing program. The event prompted great regalia and fanfare for the perfunctory demolition of a lone shack in the Techwood Flats neighborhood (Atlanta Daily World, 1934). This demolition, nonetheless, signaled the start of government designed, built, and managed low-income housing in the United States, a policy that exists in a variety of forms into the present day. However, Atlanta, the first US city to acquire land for public housing and amongst the first to create a local housing authority under the 1937 Wagner Act, also became the first US city to demolish all of its family-style public housing developments in 2011. What could have transpired over seventy-seven years within these housing developments that resulted in equal celebrations of both its construction and demolition? Further, what events have occurred around these housing developments that resulted in the marginalization of its residents who were earlier hailed as a “more valuable and patriotic citizen”(New York Times, 1940)? Both of these questions fall under the larger question regarding public housing developments: in what ways were public housing developments functioning as political spaces in postwar Atlanta? To answer this question, this project examines the politics of public housing in Atlanta, with particular attention to the years 1936-1975. The politics of public housing includes not only the political action of residents living in these 2 developments, but also the political action of those in control of the design, building, and management of public housing. This research explores the history of political movements in Atlanta’s public housing developments using the theoretical frameworks of racial construction in the South, urban politics and planning in the postwar South, spatial justice and achieving spatially just outcomes, as well as political participation and democratic inclusion. My historical analysis of public housing in Atlanta includes discussion on the peculiar institution of race in the New South, the effects this institution had on public policy and urban planning, and the political movements produced from these marginalizing policies. This project explicates how the race and welfare politics of Atlanta’s public housing policies created the identity and citizenship politics in Atlanta’s public housing developments. I begin this project with a discussion on the existing literature about public housing as a political space. Vale laid the groundwork in his work From the Puritans to the Poorhouse: Public Housing and Public Neighbors (2000), where he posits public housing as a public space. Borrowing from LeFebvre, public space in the urban landscape is “a terrain suitable for defense or attack, for struggle” (LeFebvre, 2003, 89). Using this epistemology of space, LeFebvre further defines political space as “the site and object of various [political] strategies” (2003, 44). This project theorizes public housing as a political space using examples of Atlanta’s public housing tenant associations. Given the particular history, structure, and capabilities, I suggest that these public housing developments are actually political 3 opportunity structures for poor black residents both within and around the public housing communities (Castells, 1983). These tenant associations struggled against the City’s power structure to improve and control their public spaces (public housing developments), while resisting the changes in national welfare and urban policy and local racial politics. Soss makes the claim that “the welfare system is where the poor make their most pressing claims, negotiate the policy decisions that affect them most directly, and come face to face with the state’s capacity to punish or protect” (Soss, 2000, 2). Using the aforementioned as a theoretical foundation, and the case studies that follow as empirical