“Never
Shall I Let you Down”:
Atlanta’s
First Black Mayor and the 1977 Sanitation Workers’ Strike
In 1973, Maynard
Holbrook Jackson Jr. became the first black American mayor of a major southern
city wining with 59 percent of the popular vote.
[1] This hallmark in American
history occurred during an era of American history that once again saw an
increase in black political engagement and participation, especially in roles
of leadership. The years following the 1972 National Black Political Convention
inspired the increased involvement of black Americans running for local office and
successfully becoming mayors of “Chocolate Cities”; cities with predominantly
black populations. High levels of political engagement improved access to
resources and opportunities for people of color who had been systematically
marginalized by political and economic racism. The challenges associated with
this level of political leadership begin with campaigning for election as well
as the struggles one assumes while in office. One of the major trials that
occurred during Jackson’s first term as mayor was the 1977 strike of over 1,000
of the city’s sanitation workers. This strike was not impulsive, but rather a
culmination of conflicts that had pit the black working class in Atlanta
against governing elite. Years prior, this same group of working men and women,
predominantly black Americans had stood steadfast against a political system
they believed was tyrannical and deliberately restrictive of the workers’ wages
and which did not care about maintaining substantial working conditions. In
1977, sanitation workers once again struck and expressed these similar
grievances. However, this time the main obstacle that prevented the workers
from achieving their demands was Jackson, the city’s first black mayor who
stood along side sanitation strikers three years earlier. Jackson ultimately
fired and replaced over all of the strikers with the support of much of
Atlanta’s black middle class as well as prominent civil rights leaders such as
Martin Luther King, Sr.
Conflict within the black community shows that Atlanta was entrenched in
complete intra-racial class warfare. Such particulars are often overlooked in
historical research, but are critical in order to understand how socioeconomic
class differences affect relations within the black community during the 1970s.
Jackson’s legacy
is oftentimes tainted with accusations of betrayal and self-interest; a black
mayor who campaigned as a champion of the disenfranchised and underpaid who
turned on his black working class support group once in a position of power.
Referring to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s intervention in 1968’s sanitation strike
in Memphis, one local American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees
(AFSCME) leader stated, "[King] gave his life for [strikers] . . . Dr.
King was fighting the same threats as are being made by Maynard Jackson."
Jackson’s handling of the 1977 sanitation workers’ strike has also been
described as his way of reassuring Atlanta’s white business class that he would
not put the interests of the black community above the city’s and securing
their support in the next election.
For
New Beginnings Journal, a journal
of independent labor, Jason Schultz wrote that the strike was indicative of
working class citizens continuously taking a back seat to the socioeconomic
interests of ruling elites, no matter what the background of city managers and
that the “proud tradition of battle against white supremacy and workers self-management…throughout
America during the Civil Rights and Black Power era seems like a fleeting
memory”.
However, this specific conflict should be evaluated for its complexity and its
underlying narratives must be brought to light in order for a true historical
analysis to be constructed. The 1977 Atlanta sanitation strike took place
during a period in the city’s history where class and biracial alliances were
being created under the leadership of Mayor Jackson and mayors before him. His
policies and mayoral actions transcended the issues of black versus white
racism and put, at the helm, Atlanta’s economic security and opportunity for
progression.
Frustrations
between city bosses and
sanitation
workers exasperated in early 1977 when superiors demanded strikers go back to
work, ignoring the AFSCME Local 1644’s previous agreement with the city to not
require workers to go out in extremely cold conditions. Strikers also demanded
an increase in their wages. Workers who did not go to work had their wages severely
docked along with other substantial disciplinary actions. In Jackson’s
discernment, those who struck were in the wrong and he supported city bosses’
decisions to dock and withhold the pay completely of those who refused to work.
Jackson was not entirely dismissive, nor did
his reasons show that he had put city worker’s interests on the back burner as
they believed, but he justified the eventual firings by saying that the workers
continued to strike despite his turning down of their demands. He cited that
their demands for higher wages would cost the city $10 million dollars, and
even offered to increase wages the following year. “Let there be no mistake
about it, the employees on strike need a pay increase. The employees deserve a
pay increase. But we don’t have [the money].”
In response to Jackson’s reasoning for declining the strikers’ demands, the
AFSCME ran publications in newspapers such as the New York Times and the
Washington Post showing huge surpluses in the city’s budget enough to cover
modest increases in sanitation workers’ salaries. In April, Jackson announced
the firing of all strikers to be replaced with scabs. This decision was, as
Jackson stated,
“one of the hardest [he]
had ever made”.
During deliberations between the AFSCME Local 1644 and city management, one
union member declared that Jacksons decision to fire the workers was “designed
to force [the sanitation workers] into violence”, but promised that the
strikers would “peacefully demonstrate and peacefully gather.” Union members also
claimed that Jackson declined their requests for a federal arbitrator to settle
the dispute. The mayor was quoted as saying that arbitration would be useless
and, “in the middle of a crisis…arbitration tends to lose its effectiveness.”
The AFSCME recruited the help of attorneys who failed to secure an order that
would have blocked the city from carrying out the mass firings that occurred.
Sam Hider, Atlanta’s then director of labor relations stated that the strikers’
demands for $.50 cent per hour increases could not be met and over 1,000 city
workers were fired.
Strikers used direct action and civil disobedience when battling with the city
bosses. They believed that local and national media relied on Jackson to
provide answers about what they wanted, while the neglected to collect facts
and statements from the strikers. In the strikers’ eyes, the media regarded
Jackson as the spokesman for all blacks in Atlanta. In the early stages of the
strike, after Jackson declared that anyone having issues with garbage
collection as a result of the strike to dump their garbage at a central
location, strike organizers such as Dr. Modibo Kadalie led workers and
frustrated citizens in disposing garbage on the lawn of city hall. Only then,
according to Kadalie, were the voices of the striking sanitation workers heard
and seriously covered by the city media.
[9]
In March of 1977, three
days after the walkout, Mayor Jackson enforced an April 1
st deadline
for sanitation strikers to go back to work. His ultimatum ensured that all
strikers would be fired and replaced if they did not resume their duties. By
this time, garbage had been dumped in undesignated areas across Atlanta as only
10 out of 62 of the city’s trucks were dispatched during the week. Jackson
immediately went on the offensive and criticized the AFSCME for manipulating
the workers against him stating, “It is unfortunate in the extreme that
[employees] are put in jeopardy of losing jobs because of irresponsible actions
of leaders who purport to represent their best interests”.
Jackson fired 1,024 sanitation workers on the April 1
st deadline. He
expressed that the AFSCME was exploiting the city’s poorest workers in order to
enhance its power and criticized its failed promise of no more strikes
following the restoration of its dues checkoff. “We have turned the other cheek
so many times that we have no more cheeks to turn…Now, time had run out. The
city has no choice but to act, and in my opinion [the] AFSCME is to blame”.
While announcing
his decisions, Jackson reminded the press and his constituents of the diverse
entities that supported him such as the Atlanta Business League, Chamber of
Commerce, the Urban League, SCLC, the Atlanta Baptist Ministers Union, and the
Citywide League of Neighborhoods.
These groups represented the coalition of
both the conservative white business class and the conscientious black middle
class. Jackson’s actions and inactions represented his consciousness of being a
leader of a very diverse Atlanta. Putting the needs of a working class segment
of his constituency and potentially negatively affecting the city economically
was not practical for a politician in his stage of his career or for one with
the amount of pressure from both white and black voters. In order to maintain
the support of the elite and working classes of the city, both black and white,
Jackson focused on economic prosperity and interracial unity in order to
demonstrate his aptitude of being mayor over one of the largest growing cities
in America. He was able to create better opportunities for the working class
over a more gradual time frame than they may have wanted. Promoting strong
multifaceted city management, he was able to bring more opportunity for
economic development within the city and attract migrants of profound economic
and educational statures.
Atlanta’s black
middle class stayed on Mayor Jackson’s side during the strike. They praised his
handling of the situation and for his pragmatism and decisiveness. They
believed that the strikers were being selfish when they refused to accept the
city’s explanation of budgeting issues. Editorials in the city’s main black
newspaper,
The Atlanta Daily World,
voiced the opinions of the black middle class and referred to the strike as an
“unjustified confusion”. They believed that the AFSCME was causing unnecessary
problems for the city by encouraging sanitation workers to not work. The black
middle class remembered Jackson as being sympathetic to unions and sanitation
workers as vice mayor, but the strikers’ determination to get raises were
viewed as irrational.
The rift between
the black middle and working classes began as strikers were deemed as
disruptors rather than workers fighting for better conditions and wages. In
March, the early stages of the strike, the Daily World declared, “We hope the
workers involved I this work stoppage will return to their jobs. The citizens
are entitled to a little peace at least until after the election is over.
This statement was made following reports of strikers becoming violent to workers
who had not joined them. Mayor Jackson stated that the actions of the strikers
coupled with the AFSCME classifying him as an anti-labor mayor, had jeopardized
Atlanta’s past relationship with the union. He also declared the strike illegal
and the wages as unrealistic.
Examining
the type of rhetoric used in the
Daily
World shows how much of the black middle class viewed the black working
class. Stating that
citizens deserved
peace until after the election process was over categorizes the strikers as
other and separate from the important
political processes that middle class citizens take part in. In another
article, it is stated that the people of Atlanta needed peace and stability
especially during a time where “[they] stand at the point of convincing the
world that our people can lead the South, or lose it all because of
frustrations, unfair demands, and a general lack of flexibility, so vitally
needed as human beings”.
The black middle class did not think that sanitation workers had much reason to
protest their working conditions as they had received wage increases over the
years and that the working conditions were much more streamlined and efficient
than they were in the past. The intra-racial disagreements was racialized as
the black middle class felt that the garbage workers, who were overwhelmingly
black, had been getting wage increases in the past because of the privilege of
having a black mayor. The disruption of the city’s progress is also expressed
with declarations such as, “And if they can’t see all this, why stir up a
virtual racial civil strike, when we are striving to get a black elected to
Congress?”...Let’s pick up the garbage and do our negotiating in a climate of
peace…Anything other than this makes us look like creatures undeserving of
advancement of high office. And we certainly are not either of those
distasteful items”.
Clearly, the issues within the black population over the strike were not
strictly economical but also heavily social and political. The black middle
class saw the strikers as barriers to the continuation of black power on levels
never before reached. The resentment shown towards strikers reveals how much of
the black middle class felt about the actions of working class blacks.
In order to
understand the intra-racial diversity within black Atlanta during the strike,
the segmentation of the city as a whole must be understood. The 1970s marked a
period of rapid expansion and an increase in developmental projects within the
city, primarily in the northern metropolitan region. Shopping centers, office
parks, and apartment complexes dominated the areas landscapes as the city’s
white population shifted northward leaving mostly blacks in central and
southern regions of the city. This trend of northern white flight resulted in
residential segregation; White Atlanta in the north and Black Atlanta in the
south. The city’s makeup was essentially white middle class living in the
northern suburbs, middle class blacks in southern suburbs and the majority of
the working class concentrated in the city’s central urban areas. Most new job
and economic growth was concentrated heavily in the north.
Following his election in 1973, Jackson
expressed his intent to counter disproportionate economic development between
the northern and southern regions. He pushed for the construction of William B.
Hartsfield Atlanta International Airport (later renamed Hartsfield–Jackson
Atlanta International Airport) in the southern region of the city and argued
against business leaders who wanted the facility built in the north. Jackson
asserted that the city’s southern region needed economic revitalization that
the airport would bring projecting the generation of over 10,000 jobs and
planned to utilize affirmative-action programs to gain construction contracts
for black firms and airport employees.
Such intentions sought to increase the availability and opportunities for
disenfranchised black Atlantans to participate in the workforce.
Despite being
heavily concentrated amongst those of the same ethnicity, black Atlantans were
not a uniform community with the same socioeconomic identities. Intra-racial
disparities within this subpopulation created a climate where a substantial
amount of blacks could compare their economic status to that of middle class
whites.
[18]
Journalist Peter Ross Range described Atlanta in the 1970s as the “Capital of
black-is-bountiful”. The city was home to some of the most prosperous black
communities in the United States. Businesses such as the Atlanta Life Insurance
Co., which held upwards of $85-million in assets, the Citizens Trust Company
Bank and Paschal’s Motor Hotel were a few of the city’s black owned
establishments that generated substantial revenue and secure employment
opportunities. The Atlanta University complex housed 6,000 students in four
colleges, a seminary and a graduate school. This black middle class has been
described as self-contained and laid the foundations for the type of prosperity
they saw in the 1970s for generations. Settling primarily in south Atlanta,
middle class Atlantans typical stuck to their own residential patterns and
institutions.
Such tendencies created an electorate
with views sometimes similar but more often vastly distinctive from lower class
whites and blacks. The existence of successful black owned businesses that
generated substantial revenue and opportunities for employment coupled with the
“Black Mecca’s” numerous collegiate institutions, allowed for generational
stability to develop within the black middle class as there was a large group of
college-educated blacks who didn’t have to depend on municipal or technical
jobs.
Despite the
established and further expanding black middle class, the average unemployment
rate for blacks as a whole, over half of Atlanta’s population in the mid-1970s
was twice that of white citizens.
The aforementioned white flight to northern suburbs left urban areas packed
with public housing buildings a substandard infrastructure.
Historically, white neighborhoods received
city services before black neighborhoods were even considered. Infrastructural
deprivation was evident in these neglected areas of the city, which lacked
parks, playgrounds, and in many case, proper paved roads and walkways.
Much of Atlanta’s black working class depended on city jobs with union benefits
in order to provide for themselves and create opportunities for upward mobility
and prosperity. By the end of the decade, only 41.8 percent of blacks owned
their own homes compared to 61.4 percent of whites. Also between 1972 and 1978,
the number of housing units in the city declined by 6 percent as a result of
urban demolition and renewal for new highway construction. The effects of such
changes were felt most in urban black communities within the city while housing
construction continued to increase in the suburbs. From 1970 to 1980, housing
construction increased almost 50 percent, mostly in white suburban areas. In
1975, about 16 percent of the city’s housing stock was considered substandard.
By 1980 that figure had increased by 25 percent. This substandard
classification led to the demolition of over 900 acres of housing properties
further disenfranchising urban blacks. Such projects of urban demolition and
renewal were the primary causes of the loss of low income housing for the
poorest black Atlantans.
An increasing population of semi-skilled low income blacks struggled to find
jobs as the city lost much of its industrial job opportunities in favor of more
white collar occupations such as wholesale and retail trade, finance, insurance
and real estate. With insufficient job opportunities within accessible city
limits, Atlanta’s poor, and unemployed benefited very little form the growth
that took place in the 1970s. Politically, those who reaped the benefits of the
city’s job expansion and economic development were primarily the white
middleclass who tended to vote Republican. This population mostly lived in the
so-called “Golden Crescent”, north of Interstate 20. In contrast, mostly black
Democratic voters, whose interests had been constantly overlooked by city
administrators, inhabited the city’s metropolitan area.
Both the black middle and working classes voted for Jackson, but for different
reasons.
Jackson’s 1973
election was the culmination of years of political activity and strategic
efforts of leadership and dedication. The son of a preacher at Atlanta’s
well-known Friendship Baptist Church and grandson of political activist, John
Wesley Dobbs, Jackson made a career as a lawyer who advocated for the
advancement of black political power after graduating from Morehouse College at
18 years old with degrees in political science and history. Before graduating
cum laude from North Carolina Central University School of Law, Jackson worked
for the Ohio Bureau of Unemployment Compensation. He returned to Atlanta as an
attorney for the National Labor Relations Board and for the Emory Community
Legal Services Center where he provided legal services to low income citizens,
free of charge.
In 1968, Jackson successfully campaigned to be elected vice mayor of Atlanta,
the chief officer of the city’s municipal council. During his time as vice
mayor, Jackson developed a relationship with the AFSCME Local 1644 as he
canvassed alongside the city’s sanitation workers who struck against then Mayor
Sam Massell for union recognition, an increase in their wages, and improvements
in the human resource relationships between city management and employees. This
strike in 1970 was considered an important success for the AFSCME as Massell
eventually raised wages for sanitation workers and strayed away from mass
firings. However, the AFSCME local 1644 lost its dues check-off privileges as a
result which diminished the amount of leverage the union had during the
remainder of Massey’s term.
The years leading
up to Jackson’s election were high in black political participation. Although
he was a white candidate, Ivan Allen, Jr., mayor from 1962 to 1970 won his
campaign with support from Atlanta’s black community. During his terms, he
maintained a strong alliance with representatives from that electorate and
balanced business and civic leadership with their needs.
Allen’s terms was also a period where a coalition of black legislators emerged
which put forward the needs of the majority of black Atlantans; finally placing
political power in the hands of half of the city’s often overlooked citizens.
When Allen announced he would not seek reelection, this coalition wanted to
have clear input in choosing whom they would support as his replacement. They
were encouraged by the electoral victories of black mayor’s across the nation
and believed that Atlanta was ready to successfully elect a black candidate who
could win over black Americans while being moderate enough to have the support
of white constituencies. In addition to Jackson, the coalition debated possible
candidates such as LeRoy Johnson, a member of the Negro Voters League, Fulton
County Citizens Democratic Club and the Summit Leadership Conference. Johnson
was also well known for his moderate stances on racial issues as a member of
the senate. Another proposed candidate was attorney Vernon Jordan, Jr. who
served as field director for Georgia’s branch of the NAACP and was the former
director of the Voter Education Project.
Despite
high hopes for the historic election of the city’s first black mayor, many of
the city’s black leaders never fully believed that a black candidate would win,
especially if multiple black candidates ran, and feared that the black vote
would be split and not as effective against a white candidate.
With a saturated field of candidates, the 1969 mayoral election was won by
white candidate and former vice mayor Sam Massell, who won the overwhelming
majority of the black vote in a runoff against Republican Rodney Cook, a white
alderman and state legislator who believed that the Republican Party could
increase its southern membership by appealing to black voters. During his time
as a legislator, Cook tackled the issues of low-income housing demolition and
slum clearance and advocated against deliberately segregated housing markets.
Massell campaigned as a liberal Democrat and distributed literature suggesting
that a vote for one of the black candidates would be a wasted, illogical
ballot. Before defeating Cook in the runoff, Massell won the general election
because of a fragmented black voting populous, which worked to his advantage
because he had the majority white vote.
He vowed to pay black Atlantans a “debt dating back over 100 years” and
promised to put human rights at the top of his agenda as he strove to eliminate
discrimination of blacks in his city.
More political
engagement by blacks ignited the city’s black coalition of councilmen’s
imagination of a black candidate winning a mayoral election. Blacks held
leadership positions on school boards, municipal commissions, and on the boards
of major white companies. These leaders tended to put forward the needs of the
black middle class such as assuring that black business received adequate
shares of city contracts. With the black populous now over 50 percent in the
city, black legislators believed that if black mayoral candidates were kept at
a minimum, the fragmentation of the black vote could be avoided. Before
rallying around one specific candidate, the Atlanta University Center organized
a meeting of faculty and staff and created the University Movement for Black
Unity (UMBU). The UMBU held mock elections that resulted in Jackson garnering
the majority of the votes as to whom should be the black mayoral candidate.
Following the mock election, UMBU members took action and recruited student
volunteers to distribute literature and campaign for Jackson. He was ready to
enter into the position of “The African American candidate”.
As
Jackson’s black support base grew, he also began gaining support from many white
business leaders who turned away from Massell because of his mismanagement of
much of the city’s business ordeals during his first term. Massell’s handling
of the 1970 sanitation strike and his systematic replacement of black aldermen
with whites the following year put him in an unfavorable light in the eyes of
both blacks and white liberals. Gradually, the coalitions that had elected
Massell previously were turning away from him; the city needed a unifying force
that could offer moderate, productive leadership. Major damage was done to
Massell’s hopes for reelection as his campaign strategies to win the votes of
white conservatives backfired when his ad campaigns that bore slogans such as,
“Atlanta’s too Young to Die” and “It’s Cheaper to Vote Than to Move” suggested
that the city would be destroyed economically under the leadership of a black
mayor. These strategies resulted in white moderates and businessmen supporting
Jackson, criticizing his tactics and decency. Jackson won with 59 percent of the
votes cast.
The results of this election were covered nationwide. Not only was Jackson
elected the first black mayor of a major southern city, but also the first
black politician to preside over a state’s capital anywhere in the nation.
Jackson also notably won more than 20 percent of the votes in primarily white
precincts. Black Georgia legislator Julian Bond stated that, “The voters are to
be congratulated that they didn’t allow the mayor [Massell’s] incredible racist
performance blind them to the fact that Maynard Jackson in the best man for the
job.” Then Georgia governor Jimmy Carter also commented, “I’m very grateful
that the outcome of the election does not indicate any racial division within
the city.”
Jackson’s victory
brought new optimism for black Atlantans and moderate whites. It showed that
generations of political leadership dominated by the business elite had to
share its power with the large population of central city and southern suburban
blacks. Jackson’s city council consisted of nine whites and nine black members,
the school board had five blacks and four whites and the city had a white city
council president. Jackson also put at the helm of his mayoral intentions the
push for increased consideration of minority owned firms for city contracting
jobs. During his first year in office, only $43,759 of Atlanta’s $33 million in
city contracts went to minority owned firms, a decade later, black firms held
27 percent of city contracts; totaling nearly $44 million.
The city appeared “racially balanced” and ready to prosper socially,
politically and economically.
The city was on a path of expansion, but as the 1977 strike showed, not all of
its citizens were beneficiaries of this period of progression.
In October of
1977, Jackson was reelected for a second term in a landslide biracial victory.
In primarily black precincts, he won with margins upwards of 90%. His victory
amongst both white voters and the black middle class was largely attributed to
his handling of the strike month’s prior. He continued to garner black support
despite firing sanitation men because he unceasingly enforced his policy of fairly
distributing city contracts to black businesses and the construction of the
city’s new airport which would bring in a multitude of jobs and revenue to
Atlanta.
How Jackson handled the strike certainly had implications on his political
future and the impact that the AFSCME could have on municipal employees across
the nation. Jackson’s opposition was not about strikebreaking, but strictly on
the issue of the delivery of essential city services. Jackson saw himself as,
“only the first domino in the A.F.S.C.M.E.’s Southern domino theory”. Had their
strike been successful, the victories and momentum would encourage more walkouts
across more southern states such as Florida and Alabama.
The AFSCME leadership believed that Jackson would be reelected in October but
warned that he was creating an erosion of a crucial constituency, poor and
working class blacks. AFSCME representative Owen King stated that, “You can’t
trample on your main supporters and get away with it forever”.
Georgia’s capital
has been called the “Black Mecca” of the nation since the 1970s. As a result of
years of biracial coalitions working towards the betterment of the city,
Maynard Jackson went on to serve three terms as mayor and produced substantial
economic growth each term. Black businesses flourished and affirmative action
policies facilitated the employment of much of the city’s jobless. The city was
an example of educational excellence and attracted droves of new, young minds
year after year that contributed to even more economic growth and citywide
expansion.
The success of one group of citizens in any region does not always guarantee
success for all. The risk of hindering one group’s special interests in favor
of the betterment of an entire city has proven to be an inevitable one for
political leaders throughout history. Jackson chose to take on the role of
mayor rather than
black mayor and successfully
maintained the alliances that were essential to Atlanta’s prosperity. Jackson
did not go back on his campaign promise to “never, never let down” his
constituents.
Instead his actions during the 1977’s sanitation workers’ strike demonstrated
leadership that did not deter from his philosophy of governance and one who
understood that diplomacy was the primary factor determining Atlanta’s success
during this pivotal time in the city’s history.
Research that
addresses intra-racial conflict within black America is necessary to fully
evaluate any period in American history. Comparing how the black middle class
felt about the 1977 strike with the grievances of the black working class is one
example of how the narratives of both Jackson’s mayoral terms as well as the
city of Atlanta during the 1970s could be different. Evidence shows that within
communities, class separates individuals both socially and politically.
Political campaigns and events such as this strike should not be restricted to
black vs. white, but rather much deeper analyses must be taken.
Primary Sources
The Atlanta Journal and Constitution
The Keys To
The Kingdom (1974-1980). 2006. Video. Atlanta, GA: PBS.org.
The New York Times
The Washington Post.
Secondary Sources
Atlanta, GA. Digital Collections. Georgia State University.
Black
Enterprise
Bullard, Robert D. In Search of
the New South : The Black Urban Experience in the 1970s and 1980s.
Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1989. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost),
EBSCOhost
Harmon, David Andrew. 1996. Beneath The Image Of The
Civil Rights Movement And Race Relations. New York: Garland Pub.
Harris, Adrienne, S. "The Southern Magnet." Black
Enterprise 22, no. 11 (June 1992): 335. Academic Search Complete,
EBSCOhost (accessed April 8, 2016).
Kadalie, Modibo. 2013. "This
damn Maynard Jackson..." Interview by Robert Sabatino & Andrew
Zonneveld, TV. Decatur, Ga.
Kruse, Kevin Michael. White
Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2005.
McWhirter, Cameron. 2003. "A Champion for Atlanta:
Maynard Jackson: Many Felt The Warmth Of His Smile". The Atlanta
Journal Constitution.
Rice, Bradley. 2004. "Maynard Jackson
(1938-2003)". New Georgia Encyclopedia.
Schultz, Jason. "“A Disgrace Before God”: Striking
Black Sanitation Workers Vs. Black Officialdom In 1977 Atlanta". New
Beginnings, A Journal of Independent Labour (2007)
Sjoquist, David L. The Atlanta Paradox. New
York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2000.
Cameron McWhirter, “A
Champion for Atlanta”, The Atlanta
Journal Constitution, 2003.
Kadalie, Modibo, interview by Robert Sabatino
& Andrew Zonneveld, October 6, 2013.
"Lets Pick Up The
Garbage", Atlanta Daily World, April
3rd 1977.
The Keys To The
Kingdom (1974-1980),
2006.
