The hostility to the integration of the University of Georgia in January 1961 startled some southerners. Violence against civil rights activists was not a new phenomenon, but in Georgia's capital, Atlanta, city leaders claimed to reject a hard-line stance against integration in favor of racial moderation. The city's mayor, William Hartsfield, bragged that Atlanta was "the City too Busy to Hate," hoping that national and international businesses would look to the city to invest in the growing Sunbelt economy. In cities across the South, coalitions of business owners, professionals, and investors began to preach cautious acceptance of limited desegregation as a way to improve the South's reactionary reputation. As one local study warned, racial conflict "did not make good dollars and sense."
Becoming Alabama:
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