Cascade History

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West Side Mutual Development Committee

Biracial Negotiations and Housing Expansion in 1950s Atlanta

Introduction: The Politics of “Community Integrity”

In the years following World War II, Atlanta faced a severe demographic crisis. The city’s African American population was expanding rapidly, yet Black residents were strictly confined to overcrowded, central-city neighborhoods by rigid Jim Crow zoning laws and discriminatory real estate practices. As affluent Black homebuyers began pushing into previously all-white neighborhoods on the city’s west side, racial tensions threatened to erupt into the kind of domestic terrorism and bombings seen in other Southern municipalities.

To manage this crisis, Mayor William B. Hartsfield relied on biracial coalitions, most notably the West Side Mutual Development Committee (WSMDC). This coalition of white civic leaders and Black real estate professionals was tasked with mediating neighborhood transitions, negotiating expansion corridors, and establishing “gentlemen’s agreements” regarding racial boundaries. Operating under the guiding principle of “community integrity,” the WSMDC became a primary architect of Atlanta’s spatial geography during the 1950s, attempting to manage residential segregation through negotiation rather than violence.

Chapter 1: The Housing Crisis and the “Buffer” Row

The formation of the WSMDC and similar biracial panels was born out of absolute necessity. By the mid-twentieth century, the spatial inequity in Atlanta was staggering. Following World War II, African Americans represented more than a third of Atlanta’s population but were crowded into just 10 percent of the developed residential land, mostly in sub-standard housing.[1] As W.L. Calloway, a prominent Black real estate broker, later noted in a 1962 editorial, Negroes constituted approximately 39 percent of Atlanta’s population but were housed on only 17 percent of the land.[2]

As early as 1946, Grace Towns Hamilton and the Atlanta Urban League spearheaded the Temporary Coordinating Committee on Housing (TCCH). This biracial committee set the agenda for identifying land for Black residential expansion, formalizing the negotiation tactics that would define the era.[3] This severe land shortage forced upwardly mobile Black professionals to seek housing in transitioning neighborhoods like Mozley Park. The white establishment’s initial response to this movement was the aggressive implementation of physical and zoning barriers.

“In the fall of 1952, Mayor Hartsfield proposed erecting a public housing project in the West End, Ashby Street [now Joseph E. Lowery Boulevard], and Sells Avenue area specifically to serve as a ‘buffer’ or boundary line south of which Negroes would not seek to live.”[4]

This proposal was met with fierce resistance from the Black business community. T.M. Alexander, president of the Empire Real Estate Board, publicly rebuked the Mayor, stating his committee had made no such commitment to a buffer line.[5] The Atlanta Daily World published a scathing editorial supporting Alexander, arguing that restricting the movement of Negroes was a violation of economic law that would only “contribute to the development of slums.”[6] The Atlanta Business League also publicly backed Alexander and the other officials in the “‘buffer’ row,” demonstrating a unified front against artificial racial zoning.[7]

Chapter 2: The Founding of the WSMDC

Recognizing that unilateral zoning edicts were failing and racial tensions were escalating to a near-climax, Mayor Hartsfield formally intervened. The groundwork had already been laid by city planners; in April 1952, Philip Hammer, director of the Metropolitan Planning Commission, publicly stated that Negro leaders had “OK’d” a plan for relocation and expansion to win housing gains.[8] On December 8, 1952, Hartsfield appointed a specialized biracial panel to explore “short-term and long-term answers” to the Westside housing conflict.[9]

Officially named the West Side Mutual Development Committee, the group was chaired by Philip Hammer.[10] The committee was a carefully curated assembly of the city’s power brokers, designed to bring the most influential voices from both races to the negotiating table.

The Black delegation was anchored by the city’s premier business, legal, and spiritual leaders. The appointees included T.M. Alexander (President of the Empire Real Estate Board), W.H. “Chief” Aiken (a prominent builder and real estate pioneer), A.T. Walden (a legendary civil rights attorney), C.R. Yates, Rev. William Holmes Borders (the influential pastor of Wheat Street Baptist Church), and Warren Cochrane (Executive Secretary of the Butler Street YMCA).[11] These leaders were fighting on multiple fronts; Rev. Borders, for example, would soon lead the 1957 “Law, Love, and Liberation” movement to desegregate Atlanta’s public transportation.[12]

The white delegation included staunch civic leaders and real estate figures who represented the interests of the segregated suburbs. The appointees included E.A. Sewell (who represented the West Manor and Utoy Springs civic clubs in the area that would later become Lynn Valley and Lynn Acres), J.W. Simmons, Frank Carter, John O. Chiles, J.H. Baskin, and A.B. Simms.[13]

Chapter 3: “Gentlemen’s Agreements” and White Resistance

The WSMDC operated on the concept of “community integrity.” As defined by city planners and the committee, if a community was “complete and homogenous,” leaders would use available tools to preserve it as a white or Black area. Historian Kevin M. Kruse notes that the WSMDC acted as a “summit conference between Cold War superpowers,” where white civic leaders negotiated with Black real estate brokers to decide which neighborhoods would be “saved” for white residents and which would be “conceded” to Black expansion.[14]

The committee was operating in a veritable powder keg. White residents across the West Side were utilizing extreme measures to halt Black expansion. In March 1954, white residents in the Grove Park neighborhood formally incorporated a group specifically to buy up local property to “Bar Negroes” from moving into the area.[15] By December 1954, white civic groups were actively petitioning the city government to legally ban Negroes from residing in specific residential zones.[16]

Through the WSMDC, Alexander and the Black delegation successfully navigated this hostility, negotiating the agreements that allowed Black residents to officially take over the Mozley Park area. Remarkably, through swift, systematic buy-outs of homes in Mozley Park by white realtors and immediate purchases of the homes by African American families through Black realtors, 737 homes in this community changed hands between 1954 and 1955.[17] The city continued to rely on this model throughout the decade. In September 1955, Mayor Hartsfield formed another specific “mixed panel” to study the issue of “West End Encroachment,” appointing T.M. Alexander alongside white civic leaders like R.C. Stuart to manage the shifting racial boundaries block-by-block.[18], [19]

Chapter 4: Opening the Western Corridor and Collier Heights

The most significant achievement of the WSMDC was facilitating the opening of the western corridor for Black suburban development. By negotiating these expansion zones in committee rather than fighting street-by-street, Black developers were able to secure the land necessary to build custom, high-quality neighborhoods.

In March 1954, the Atlanta Daily World heralded this achievement, announcing that plans mapped by the interracial committee had revealed a new residential area to open.[20] This negotiated expansion paved the way for the development of Collier Heights, a sprawling, custom-built suburb designed by Black architects specifically for the Black elite. The WSMDC played a direct financial role in this development; as noted in a 1990 retrospective, the committee “was set up to make loans” and help acquire property, allowing private ingenuity to take over from there.[21]

The mechanics of this expansion relied on a highly coordinated effort between civil rights organizations and the WSMDC. To prevent white sellers from price-gouging Black buyers in the newly opened corridors, the Atlanta Urban League set up a land bank to quietly acquire property.[22] The West Side Mutual Development Committee was then utilized to help facilitate the loans and financing for these tracts, allowing private Black ingenuity and developers to take over the construction of the neighborhoods.[23]

However, Black leaders made it clear that these segregated expansion zones were a pragmatic necessity, not an ideological endorsement. In September 1959, the Empire Real Estate Board explicitly informed the city’s new Housing Coordinator that “open occupancy” remained their ultimate objective and policy, proving they never abandoned the goal of total integration.[24]

Chapter 5: The 1959 Civil Rights Commission

Historical Context: The Federal Hearings
The success of this negotiated expansion garnered national attention. In April 1959, the United States Commission on Civil Rights held hearings at Atlanta City Hall as part of a study on U.S. housing.[25], [26] During the hearings, Mayor Hartsfield testified that forced integration in housing would be “unwise” and would actively hurt the city’s program of negotiated expansion.[27]

The federal commission’s findings, published in September 1959, explicitly validated the WSMDC’s methods. The commission noted that while Atlanta’s housing remained segregated, the city had successfully avoided the bombings and violence seen elsewhere by using “gentlemen’s agreements” and biracial committees to negotiate expansion.[28] Black leaders actively defended this negotiated expansion to the federal government. T.M. Alexander testified that the races “cooperate here” and proudly declared that Dixie Negro housing was “Better Than North’s” precisely because of the negotiated expansion corridors the committee had secured, arguing that the quality of the new Black suburbs in Atlanta was superior to the crowded ghettos of the North.[29], [30]

This expansion was driven by necessity. As the white “Atlanta Real Estate Board” noted in a massive 1959 display advertisement, urban renewal programs were bulldozing central-city neighborhoods, displacing citizens so rapidly that 7,000 units of public housing were immediately needed.[31] This perfectly illustrates the immense demographic pressure the WSMDC was attempting to manage.

Chapter 6: The Collapse of the Consensus

Despite its early successes in opening the western corridor, the WSMDC was ultimately a fragile coalition built on the flawed premise of managed segregation. As the 1950s gave way to the 1960s, the sheer demographic pressure of Atlanta’s growing Black population overwhelmed the artificial boundaries and “gentlemen’s agreements” established by the committee.[32]

When affluent Black professionals began purchasing homes in the Cascade Heights and Peyton Forest subdivisions in 1962, the white civic leaders abandoned negotiation in favor of aggressive municipal legislation. In August 1962, white aldermen proposed creating a 75-acre “Black cemetery” on Willis Mill Road to serve as a permanent “buffer zone” against Black expansion.[33]

The Black community fiercely protested the measure. When Mayor Ivan Allen Jr. vetoed the cemetery proposal on August 24, 1962, the Black community publicly praised his decision, stating they believed he was “keenly aware” of their desires.[34]

However, this goodwill evaporated in December 1962 when the city erected the infamous Peyton Road Wall, a physical barricade of wood and steel designed to halt integration. The erection of the wall signaled the definitive end of the WSMDC’s era of biracial negotiation.

In a blistering op-ed published in The Atlanta Constitution on December 28, 1962, W.L. Calloway, a prominent Black real estate broker, captured the frustration of the era. He argued that the city was experiencing “growing pains” due to urban renewal displacement, and instead of intelligent planning, the white establishment was simply making Black real estate brokers the “scapegoat” and the “victims.”[35] Calloway reminded the city that pointing fingers was no cure, but rather that vision, planning, understanding and even appreciation of the benefits to be derived from this growth was a more intelligent approach.[36]

Conclusion

The West Side Mutual Development Committee represents a highly complex chapter in Atlanta’s civil rights history. It was an institution born of compromise, designed to maintain residential segregation without resorting to the bombings and mob violence that plagued other Southern cities. While its “gentlemen’s agreements” were inherently discriminatory, the Black leaders who served on the committee pragmatically utilized the forum to secure the vital land and financing necessary for Black suburban expansion. By negotiating the opening of the western corridor, the WSMDC inadvertently laid the geographic foundation for the thriving, affluent Black neighborhoods that define Southwest Atlanta today.

Related Reading:

Footnotes & Citations (Click to Expand)
Citations:
  1. Clarissa Myrick-Harris and Norman Harris, “Retrenchment and Redirection (1950-1959),” Atlanta Regional Council for Higher Education, 2005. ↑
  2. W.L. Calloway, “Realtor Charges Search Again Made For ‘Scapegoat’ in Housing of Negroes,” The Atlanta Constitution, December 28, 1962, 4. ↑
  3. Clarissa Myrick-Harris and Norman Harris, “Retrenchment and Redirection (1950-1959),” Atlanta Regional Council for Higher Education, 2005. ↑
  4. “The Question Of A ‘Buffer’,” Atlanta Daily World, September 18, 1952, 6. ↑
  5. “The Question Of A ‘Buffer’,” Atlanta Daily World, September 18, 1952, 6. ↑
  6. “The Question Of A ‘Buffer’,” Atlanta Daily World, September 18, 1952, 6. ↑
  7. “Business League Backs Officials In ‘Buffer’ Row,” Atlanta Daily World, September 18, 1952, 1. ↑
  8. Robert E. Johnson, “Hammer Says Negroes Must Relocate To Win Gains: Director Says Negro Leaders OK’d Plain,” Atlanta Daily World, April 24, 1952, 1. ↑
  9. “Bi-Racial Group Named In Westside Housing Tiff,” The Atlanta Journal, December 9, 1952, 7. ↑
  10. “Bi-Racial Group Named In Westside Housing Tiff,” The Atlanta Journal, December 9, 1952, 7. ↑
  11. “Bi-Racial Group Named In Westside Housing Tiff,” The Atlanta Journal, December 9, 1952, 7. ↑
  12. Clarissa Myrick-Harris and Norman Harris, “Retrenchment and Redirection (1950-1959),” Atlanta Regional Council for Higher Education, 2005. ↑
  13. “Bi-Racial Group Named In Westside Housing Tiff,” The Atlanta Journal, December 9, 1952, 7. ↑
  14. Kevin Michael Kruse, “White Flight: Resistance to Desegregation of Neighborhoods, Schools and Businesses in Atlanta, 1946-1966” (Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 2000), 382. ↑
  15. “Grove Park Group Buying Property To Bar Negroes,” The Atlanta Journal, March 9, 1954, 31. ↑
  16. “Group Asked To Ban Negroes In Residence Zone,” Atlanta Daily World, December 3, 1954, 1. ↑
  17. Clarissa Myrick-Harris and Norman Harris, “Retrenchment and Redirection (1950-1959),” Atlanta Regional Council for Higher Education, 2005. ↑
  18. “Mayor Forms Mixed Panel To Study Encroachment Here,” The Atlanta Constitution, September 2, 1955, 6. ↑
  19. “Panel Named On West End Encroachment,” The Atlanta Journal, September 2, 1955, 5. ↑
  20. “Realty Board Reveals New Residential Area To Open,” Atlanta Daily World, March 14, 1954, 1. ↑
  21. “Collier Heights at a glance,” The Atlanta Constitution, November 25, 1990, 293. ↑
  22. “Historic: African-American suburb up for national honor,” The Atlanta Constitution, September 21, 2008, D5. ↑
  23. “Historic: African-American suburb up for national honor,” The Atlanta Constitution, September 21, 2008, D5. ↑
  24. “Housing Plans As ‘Open Occupancy’,” Atlanta Daily World, September 18, 1959, 1. ↑
  25. John Britton, “ATLANTANS TESTIFY TODAY AT CITY HALL BEFORE THE CIVIL RIGHTS COMMISSION,” Atlanta Daily World, April 10, 1959, 1. ↑
  26. “Rights Unit to Look At Atlanta Housing,” The Macon Telegraph, April 10, 1959, 2. ↑
  27. “Integration Called Unwise in Housing,” The Macon News, April 10, 1959, 1. ↑
  28. “U.S. Finds Negroes Accept Some Bars,” The Atlanta Constitution, September 9, 1959, 10. ↑
  29. “Fact-Ferreting Rights Unit Told Races Cooperate Here,” The Atlanta Journal, April 10, 1959, 1. ↑
  30. “Dixie Negro Housing ‘Better Than North’s’,” The Atlanta Journal, April 11, 1959, 1. ↑
  31. Display Advertisement for Atlanta Real Estate Board, The Atlanta Journal, June 10, 1959, 4. ↑
  32. “Atlanta’s Biggest Racial Test of 50 Years Close at Hand,” The Atlanta Journal, October 11, 1959, 140. ↑
  33. “Board Of Aldermen Okays Controversial Building Of Cemetery In Atlanta,” Atlanta Daily World, August 21, 1962, 1. ↑
  34. John Britton, “MAYOR ALLEN’S VETO PRAISED: ‘HE IS KEENLY AWARE’ OF COMMUNITY DESIRE,” Atlanta Daily World, August 26, 1962, 1. ↑
  35. W.L. Calloway, “Realtor Charges Search Again Made For ‘Scapegoat’ in Housing of Negroes,” The Atlanta Constitution, December 28, 1962, 4. ↑
  36. W.L. Calloway, “Realtor Charges Search Again Made For ‘Scapegoat’ in Housing of Negroes,” The Atlanta Constitution, December 28, 1962, 4. ↑
Comprehensive Bibliography (Click to Expand)
  • Atlanta Daily World. “Board Of Aldermen Okays Controversial Building Of Cemetery In Atlanta.” August 21, 1962.
  • Atlanta Daily World. “Business League Backs Officials In ‘Buffer’ Row.” September 18, 1952.
  • Atlanta Daily World. “Group Asked To Ban Negroes In Residence Zone.” December 3, 1954.
  • Atlanta Daily World. “Housing Plans As ‘Open Occupancy’.” September 18, 1959.
  • Atlanta Daily World. “Local Option Backers Continue At Hearing In Atlanta, Columbus.” April 1, 1960.
  • Atlanta Daily World. “NAACP Raps Plan For Buffer Project.” December 10, 1952.
  • Atlanta Daily World. “Realty Board Reveals New Residential Area To Open.” March 14, 1954.
  • Atlanta Daily World. “The Question Of A ‘Buffer’.” September 18, 1952.
  • Britton, John. “ATLANTANS TESTIFY TODAY AT CITY HALL BEFORE THE CIVIL RIGHTS COMMISSION.” Atlanta Daily World, April 10, 1959.
  • Britton, John. “MAYOR ALLEN’S VETO PRAISED: ‘HE IS KEENLY AWARE’ OF COMMUNITY DESIRE.” Atlanta Daily World, August 26, 1962.
  • Calloway, W.L. “Realtor Charges Search Again Made For ‘Scapegoat’ in Housing of Negroes.” The Atlanta Constitution, December 28, 1962.
  • Johnson, Robert E. “Hammer Says Negroes Must Relocate To Win Gains: Director Says Negro Leaders OK’d Plain.” Atlanta Daily World, April 24, 1952.
  • Kruse, Kevin Michael. “White Flight: Resistance to Desegregation of Neighborhoods, Schools and Businesses in Atlanta, 1946-1966.” Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 2000.
  • Myrick-Harris, Clarissa, and Norman Harris. “Retrenchment and Redirection (1950-1959).” Atlanta Regional Council for Higher Education, 2005.
  • The Atlanta Constitution. “Collier Heights at a glance.” November 25, 1990.
  • The Atlanta Constitution. “Historic: African-American suburb up for national honor.” September 21, 2008.
  • The Atlanta Constitution. “Mayor Forms Mixed Panel To Study Encroachment Here.” September 2, 1955.
  • The Atlanta Constitution. “U.S. Finds Negroes Accept Some Bars.” September 9, 1959.
  • The Atlanta Journal. “Atlanta’s Biggest Racial Test of 50 Years Close at Hand.” October 11, 1959.
  • The Atlanta Journal. “Bi-Racial Group Named In Westside Housing Tiff.” December 9, 1952.
  • The Atlanta Journal. Display Advertisement for Atlanta Real Estate Board. June 10, 1959.
  • The Atlanta Journal. “Dixie Negro Housing ‘Better Than North’s’.” April 11, 1959.
  • The Atlanta Journal. “Fact-Ferreting Rights Unit Told Races Cooperate Here.” April 10, 1959.
  • The Atlanta Journal. “Grove Park Group Buying Property To Bar Negroes.” March 9, 1954.
  • The Atlanta Journal. “Panel Named On West End Encroachment.” September 2, 1955.
  • The Macon News. “Integration Called Unwise in Housing.” April 10, 1959.
  • The Macon Telegraph. “Rights Unit to Look At Atlanta Housing.” April 10, 1959.
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