White flight

For much of the civil rights era, Atlanta prided itself on being a Southern city where Black and white residents got along and prospered side by side. Across the 1960s and 1970s, though, large numbers of white residents moved out to the suburbs, and the city's reputation shifted to match. Kevin Kruse examines why this exodus happened, what it set in motion, and how it played out in Atlanta and beyond. Rather than dismissing segregationists as simple bigots, he takes their reasoning seriously and asks what their resistance actually meant to them.

Kruse argues that the flight to the suburbs was more than a change of address. It reflected a deeper shift in the political beliefs of the people involved. Traditional conservative commitments, including distrust of federal authority and faith in the free market, were reshaped during the long fight over segregation. That resistance also produced new conservative causes such as the tax revolt, school vouchers, and the privatization of public services.

His account traces how Southern conservatives moved from defending white supremacy to defending the suburbs, and he presents this path as a key to understanding the origins of modern American politics. Although segregationists lost the battle against the civil rights movement, Kruse contends they preserved segregation's basic structures, often in less visible and more durable forms.