RACE AND POLITICS OF TRANSPORTATION IN ATLANTA. IN: JUST TRANSPORTATION: DISMANTLING RACE & CLASS BARRIERS TO MOBILITY

This article describes how race, politics and transportation have had a long and intimately connected history in the Atlanta Metropolitan Area. Major transportation facilities, such as Interstate 20, for example, while conceived as important and valuable links in the metropolitan freeway system, also isolated and separated Atlanta's black and white residential communities. Former Mayor Ivan Allen tried to block off Peyton Road as a means of reducing neighborhood accessibility and of implementing racially-motivated policies. Political gains made by black citizens in state and local government and their progress in reducing housing and the labor-market discrimination make such use of transportation facilities and expenditures to disadvantaged black Atlantans much more difficult to accomplish. This link between race, politics and transportation continues nevertheless and finds voice through the action of sub-urban voters who continue to reject the extension of Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) service into their counties.