The story of business leaders enlisting clergymen in their war against the New Deal is one that has been largely obscured by the very ideology that r… - Kevin Michael Kruse

The intricate dynamics of personal and group interaction -- and their interplay with structural forces -- are most visible only at the local level. I chose to conduct a case study precisely because it allows for a rich description and analysis of the processes that are all too often left in the realm of broad generalizations - racism, discrimination, backlash, "white flight"...Atlanta struck me as a logical site for such an analysis.

Business leaders, of course, had long been working to "merchandise" themselves through the appropriation of religion. In organizations such as Spiritual Mobilization, the prayer breakfast groups, and the Freedoms Foundation, they had linked capitalism and Christianity and, at the same time, likened the welfare state to godless paganism. After decades of work, these businessmen believed their efforts had finally paid off with the election of Dwight Eisenhower.

Atlanta...holds a singular place as the political and economic leader of the New South; it served as the headquarters for a number of civil rights organizations; it has been a center of black higher education. Furthermore, Atlanta has hailed itself as the 'city too busy to hate' -- one of 'progressive' race relations...Central figures in civil rights history - such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Walter White, Martin Luther King, Sr. and Martin Luther King, Jr., Whitney Young, John Lewis, Andrew Young, Vernon Jordan, Ralph Abernathy, and Julian Bond - have lived inside its limits at one time or another...While Atlanta, like any other city, is unique in certain ways, I do not believe it is unique in regard to its struggles over race and rights.