Fulton County
Legacy, Memory, and Movement
Legacies of Racial Violence
Behind a reputation of peace and prosperity, Atlanta and Fulton County emerged over the twentieth century as a Black Mecca in the minds of many Americans. Despite Atlanta’s moniker as “The City Too Busy to Hate,” white supremacist beliefs and practices have profoundly shaped the city’s history as well as its contemporary landscapes. The Fulton County study connects the violence exacted by the Klu Klux Klan in the name of white supremacy to the ongoing challenges of police brutality. Through site visits, interviews and oral histories, we also highlight African Americans’ embodied memory of racial violence and the political geographies of resistance to oppression.
Political Geographies of Fulton county
Reconstruction
In the years following the Civil War, racialized violence was rampant. From county to county and state to state, there were rapes, lynchings, scalpings, drownings, and all manner of anti-black violence1 at the hands of white individuals, mobs, and supremacist groups. Thanks to President Andrew Johnson’s pardons and amnesty, Reconstruction was overseen by the demoralized leaders of the Confederacy that lost the war.1 Yes, it is true that after Emancipation “many Blacks walked off the plantation into the State House”, but by and large, Reconstruction failed to provide economic and democratic rights for Blacks.2 President Lincoln never intended for blacks and whites to be equal socially or politically,1 the Supreme Court made several rulings that undermined the right to vote, citizenship, and the prohibition of segregation, and Black Codes ensured cheap labor and severely limited the rights of African Americans, yet Southern whites were still committed to persecuting and subjugating Blacks and exacting their hatred of the federal government onto the formerly enslaved.3 To do so, they “unleashed a reign of terror and anti-black violence.” 1
The movement to reaffirm and preserve white supremacy became a concerted effort and as a result, supremacist groups were initiated across the South. Conditions became so vile, that after Johnson’s impeachment, President Grant urged Congress to pass legislation to thwart the savage violence taking place in the South. The result was the Klu Klux Klan Act of 1871. Although no one was convicted as a result of the Act it “enabled the federal government to use the full extent of its power to intervene in the prevailing lawlessness in the South and protect the rights of individuals. To ensure equal protection, federal law enforcement was empowered to intervene in southern states, and federal district attorneys could prosecute the Klan under federal law.”4
Once Democrats regained power, the KKK declined because there was no need for their enforcement. They rolled back any semblance of Reconstruction replacing it with Jim Crow Laws, yet many whites still felt the need to enact racialized violence. “In 1915, the film Birth of a Nation played for three weeks in Atlanta, portraying the Klan as a gallant organization saving the white South. The film broke all box office attendance records in the city. On Thanksgiving Day in 1916 white men gathered on the top of Stone Mountain to initiate the new secret order of the Atlanta Klu Klux Klan. Soon the organization spread north and west” The Klan grew rapidly, reaching an alleged membership of 4 million by 1925. Atlanta membership is hard to determine and estimates vary widely. East Point city attorney Harold Sheats admitted that the entire police department, mayor, and city council were members of the Klan so he joined too. They were also in the courts, and several Atlanta judges were klansmen.5
It should come as no surprise that law enforcement was fertile ground for KKK recruitment because policing as a Southern institution is an extension and incarnation of slave patrols. The inception and development of the American police can be traced to a multitude of historical, legal, and poli-economic conditions. “In 1704, the colony of Carolina developed the nation’s first slave patrol. Slave patrols helped to maintain the economic order and to assist the wealthy landowners in recovering and punishing slaves who essentially were considered property.” 6 Slave patrols were the first publicly funded police agencies in the American South. 7
Slave patrols remained in place during the Civil War. When slavery ended they merged with newly forming groups and became the federal military, state militia, and Ku Klux Klan to name a few. These new orders assumed the previous responsibilities of the slave patrols with increased virulence and violence. Whether by mutation, proximity, or linear progression these groups operated similarly to some of the newly established police departments in the United States.8 One such example is the Charleston Police Department. By 1837, there was 100 officers whose primary function was to regulate the movements of slaves and free blacks, checking documents, enforcing slave codes, guarding against slave revolts, and catching runaway slaves.” 9
The 1960s were a bittersweet period in American history. The struggle for Civil Rights was at its apex and Atlanta, the birthplace of civil rights, played a pivotal role in fashioning leaders and undergirding the movement. Brave men and women across various walks of life from the North and South fought to begin to claim the country from the snares of racial hatred. Just as they had during Reconstruction, white southerners were committed to maintaining control, supremacy, and political and economic power by any means necessary. Among other advancements was the desegregation and inclusion of Blacks on police forces. Originally thought to be a good idea, it ultimately amounted to turmoil for Black communities. Residents testified that the Black cops were more vicious than their white counterparts (partially because they had to prove their allegiance to the force).
Although Section 1 of the Civil Rights Act of 1871, better known as the Klu Klux Klan Act, codified at 42 U.S.C. § 1983, was enacted to combat persistent Southern lawlessness,” it went largely unfulfilled for almost 90 years because of narrow judicial interpretations of its provisions.” 10 In 1961, the Supreme Court in Monroe v. Pape interpreted “under color of” state law in a broad manner and as a result, section 1983 again became a potentially significant vehicle for redressing deprivations of civil rights. However, it was not until Monell v. Department of Social Services, in 1978 that municipalities were stripped of their absolute immunity from section 1983 liability.” 10 Today, the Monell claim is employed by Civil Rights attorneys whose clients have had their constitutional rights violated by police officers, black and white. The Monell Claim asserts that the official acted unconstitutionally due to a pattern, practice, or policy within the municipality or the police force ( S. Williams, personal communication, November 8, 2023). Even in the 21st Century, the practices that developed from the slave patrollers and those trying to maintain the hierarchy of race and class are still pervasive.
Works Cited:
- Anderson, C. (2017). White rage: the unspoken truth of our racial divide (Paperback edition). New York: Bloomsbury, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.
- Wilson, W. J. (2012). The truly disadvantaged: the inner city, the underclass, and public policy (Second edition.). Chicago ; London: University of Chicago Press.
- Du Bois, W. E. B. (1995). Black Reconstruction in America (1st Touchstone ed.). Simon & Schuster.
- 4. History, Art & Archives, U.S. House of Representatives, “In Pursuit of “Practical Freedom,” https://history.house.gov/Exhibitions-and-Publications/BAIC/Historical-Essays/Fifteenth-Amendment/Civil-Rights-Act-of-1875/ (January 14, 2024)
- The Ku Klux Klan in Atlanta, Cassette: 31. Living Atlanta oral history collection, aarllivingatlanta. Auburn Avenue Research Library on African-American Culture and History.
- Kappeler, V. (2014, January 7). A Brief History of Slavery and the Origins of American Policing. Retrieved December 5, 2023, from EKU Online website: https://ekuonline.eku.edu/blog/police-studies/brief-history-slavery-and-origins-american-policing/
- Walker, S. (1998). Popular justice: a history of American criminal justice (2nd ed). New York: Oxford University Press.
- Durr, M. (2015). What is the Difference between Slave Patrols and Modern Day Policing? Institutional Violence in a Community of Color. Critical Sociology, 41(6), 873-879. https://doi.org/10.1177/0896920515594766
- Barlow DE and Barlow MH (1999) A political economy of community policing. Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management 22: 646–674
- Thomas, D. (1978). Governmental Liability Under Section 1983 and the Fourteenth Amendment After Monell. St. John’s Law Review Volume 53, Fall.