“Order as well as Decency”: The Development of Order Maintenance Policing in Black Atlanta

Abstract

In 1971, Ebony magazine named Atlanta the country’s “new Black Mecca,” citing its black political and economic leadership as well as the success of black businesses in the city. At this same time, however, Atlanta, like cities around the country, experienced rising crime rates and economic decline in its urban core. This article examines how Atlanta’s black political leaders, supported by both white and black business owners, responded to the crime crisis by privileging the preservation of order and the protection of capital in their public safety policies. It suggests that this commitment to orderliness, often overlooked in examinations of black political culture, undergirded black political leaders’ advocacy of punitive crime control procedures in the postcivil rights era. Analyzing how black political officials and property owners advocated for intensified foot patrol policing and public decency legislation, this article argues that the city’s black political class were early theorizers and codifiers of order maintenance, or “broken windows,” or still “quality-of-life” policing. Consequently, black business owners and municipal officials sanctioned the expansion of police power in low-income urban neighborhoods in the postcivil rights era.

The Mass Criminalization of Black Americans: A Historical Overview

“…Over the course of the 1970s and through the wars on drugs and gangs in the 1980s and 1990s, law enforcement campaigns advanced tactical units such as SWAT, armored cars, tear gas, and military-grade weapons (Balko 2013, Hinton 2016, Murch 2015. Young men and women of color, in particular, found themselves increasingly vulnerable to these aggressive crime suppression and order-maintenance strategies deployed by militarized law enforcement officials (Butler 2017, Fischer 2019, Taylor 2016, Wiggins 2017.…”

Racial Capitalism and City Politics: Toward a Theoretical Synthesis

“…After Jackson assumed control of the police bureaucracy and appointed an African American Public Safety Commissioner, intra-racial divisions became apparent. Wiggins (2020) shows how middle-class African American leaders in Atlanta turned to police and punishment to protect “Black capitalism.” She carefully documents how African American civic and business leaders and Black elected officials responded to Atlanta's crime problem by promoting greater policing and incarceration of unemployed and homeless African Americans. At a 1981 meeting with Jackson, Lee P. Brown, the Public Safety Commissioner, and other city officials, business and property owners from Sweet Auburn, the city's historic Black business district, complained about the “criminal elements” that had been “slowing down economic development and making life miserable for many merchants.” A representative from the Martin Luther King Jr. Center highlighted prostitution as blight on the area.…”

“…Others stressed loitering. Wiggins reports, “Several citizens pointed to the problems in the criminal justice system, particularly at the municipal court level, arguing that the courts needed to be stricter and more systematic in their sentencing of such victimless crimes” (2020, 712).…”

“…The embrace of punitive solutions by White and Black middle-class leadership in Atlanta was dictated not by the capacity or incentives of federal initiatives but by their material interests and class-based values. Wiggins rightly notes that White businesses, whose views were “colored by racial animus,” worried that crime would harm Atlanta's “reputation as a business-friendly city” (2020, 716). It is also very clear that Black officials were not simply capitulating to White demands.…”

“…It is also very clear that Black officials were not simply capitulating to White demands. Instead, Wiggins observes a biracial coalition “united in their demand for greater police presence to address crimes against persons, property, and order” (ibid., 717). African Americans were active members of this alliance: “Black city council members were on the forefront in proposing city legislation that would restore order and decency to the streets of Atlanta” (ibid, 720).…”