Alayna Urquhart

And in Atlanta alone, the population of black citizens rose from less than 10,000 just after the war to around 35,000 by 1900.

That's actually insane.

Significant growth.

So this huge increase of black Atlantans was directly related to the educational and economic opportunities that

simply couldn't be found elsewhere.

But a secondary thing that made this migration happen was the community and social networks that arose from the population increase.

By the end of the 19th century, black enclaves like Sweet Auburn and the West End had become like havens for black businesses, academics, and activists that would become very essential to the civil rights movement of the early to mid 20th century.

So this all kind of led to further growth and further progress.

Despite this progress and stability, though, Atlanta, like a lot of southern regions, would remain mostly segregated for many decades after the Civil War.

And resentment was still a regular part of life.

Yeah.

The tension between black advancement and white resentment for that came to a head in 1906 when an event known as the Atlanta Race Massacre laid bare the disparity between black and white existence in Atlanta.

I mean, anything that's labeled a massacre should horrify you.

Hoping to capitalize on the growing fears of, you know, what was being touted as black-on-white crime at the time, a number of Atlanta newspapers, which I've already prefaced, published articles in the fall of 1906 that magnified or simply made the fuck up examples of black residents attacking white residents.

Oh, good.

On September 22nd, two Atlanta newspapers published articles claiming that four white women had been sexually assaulted by black men.

Now, we've seen this happen before.

Yep.

Causing the racial tensions to simply boil over.

This is something I'm sure you're thinking, Emmett Till.