White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism

by Kevin M. Kruse

The drop-off in white usage, however, was not due to the actual desegregation of the buses but their threatened desegregation. The ministers’ lawsuit took two years to work its way through the court; meanwhile, they urged blacks to abide by segregated seating patterns. Apparently, they did. An Atlanta University sociology student rode the buses in April and May 1957, for instance, and found that the old patterns of segregation persisted. “Of the total number of white passengers riding the buses, the largest number preferred to sit from ‘front to center,’ ” he noted on a rush hour bus. “Whites did not change their seats for Negroes. Most of the white passengers boarded by the front entrance and departed by the front exit.” That might have been expected, but the observer found that blacks also abided by the old codes. “Negro passengers elected in the majority of the cases viewed to sit from ‘center to rear,’ ” he observed on a residential line. “Most of the Negroes boarded by the front entrance and departed by the center exit.” In the three weeks he rode the buses, he witnessed only a single conflict between blacks and whites, a verbal one at that.19