What Atlanta and the rest of the nation needed now, he insisted, was “a clear definition from Congress” on how to uproot racial discrimination. “I have heard dozens of businessmen say that if there had been a court order or definition by Congress, it would have been easier to desegregate,” the mayor testified. Congress’s failure to act, he said, “would amount to an endorsement of private business setting up an entirely new status of discrimination throughout the Nation. Cities like Atlanta,” he warned, “might slip backward.”1
