Oasis of Tolerance

In many a Deep South city, a mayor who addresses Negro gatherings as "Ladies and Gentlemen," who puts Negroes on the police force and orders the Parks Department to let Negroes play golf on municipal courses, could be listed as a potential political suicide. Atlanta's Mayor William Berry Hartsfield has done all these things--and many more like them. He ordered city employees to use "Dear Mr. Jones" instead of "Dear Jim" in answering letters from Negroes. In 1951 he approved of a national convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in Atlanta, furnished a police honor escort from and to the airport for a visiting Negro dignitary, Diplomat Ralph Bunche. Last week, nevertheless, Bill Hartsfield, 67, won his sixth term as mayor, narrowly beating out a rival for the Democratic nomination in Atlanta's biggest mayoralty vote (one-third Negro). In Georgia the Democratic primary victory means election.

Hartsfield keeps winning elections because of special qualities--both his and Atlanta's. He is a shrewd political showman, rarely misses the chance to make a speech, once delighted his audience by conducting a symphony orchestra with a Confederate flag. He is also an able administrator who gets a lot of public works built and yet manages to keep his budgets balanced. Thriving Atlanta, thickly infiltrated with migrants from the North, is still a Jim Crow city, but is on the whole ashamed of the violent racial prejudice that is the stock in trade of such wool-hat-minded Georgia politicos as Herman Talmadge and Governor Marvin Griffin. The powerful editorial voice of the Atlanta Constitution (circ. 192,520) does not hesitate to speak up for Negro rights, and it found no difficulty in backing Mayor Hartsfield for reelection.

Last week, besides endorsing Mayor Hartsfield, thousands of white Atlantans showed their independence in a citywide vote by voting for two Negro office seekers. Atlanta University's longtime President Rufus Clement, 56, beating out a white contender, was re-elected to the board of education, although the white-supremacy camp (which argued that Clement won the seat by accident the first time) tirelessly reminded voters that he is a Negro. Insurance Dealer Theodore Morton Alexander, 48, first Negro to run for alderman in Atlanta since 1871, finished a close second with two white candidates against him, stands an outside chance of winning a top-two runoff next week. After what he considered a moral victory, Alexander paid high tribute to Bill Hartsfield: "As I listened to the returns, my heart was beating faster for him than it was for me."

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