A new book by Rebecca Burns
During the hot summer of 1906, anger simmered in Atlanta, a city that outwardly savored its reputation as the Gate City of the New South, a place where the races lived peacefully, if apart, and everyone focused more on prosperity than prejudice. But racial hatred came to the forefront during a heated political campaign, and the city’s newspapers fanned its flames with sensational reports alleging assaults on white women by black men. The rage erupted in late September, and, during one of the most brutal race riots in the history of America, roving groups of whites attacked and killed at least twenty-five blacks. After four days of violence, black and white civic leaders came together in unprecedented meetings that can be viewed as either concerted public relations efforts to downplay the events, or as setting the stage for Atlanta’s Civil Rights leadership half a century later.
Rage in the Gate City focuses on the events of August and September 1906, offering readers a tightly woven narrative account of those eventful days. Intended for a general audience, this book brings history to life with a fast-paced structure and vivid detail.
What people are saying about Rage in the Gate City
“The Atlanta Riot of 1906 was a tragedy fueled by misinformation and political ambition, but it ultimately led to the first steps of interracial cooperation that characterized progressive Atlanta for the next hundred years. The riot and its aftermath shaped leaders like John Wesley Dobbs, Walter White, W.E.B. Du Bois, Henry Hugh Proctor, and John Hope, and transformed the city later dubbed “too busy to hate.” Perhaps if more Americans read Rage in the Gate City—the story of this important, but often overlooked, chapter in Atlanta’s history—it might save our nation from the painful repetition of these acts of hatred and violence.”
— Congressman John Lewis
“Rage in the Gate City is a compelling read that captures a horrific period in Atlanta history—the 1906 Atlanta Race Riot. As a black youth in Atlanta’s segregated schools, I wasn’t taught this story in my eighth grade Georgia History course. And the unsettling facts of the events leading up to the riot have never fully been aired in a single volume. This book is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand how Atlanta has become the city that it is today as a result of what Burns describes as a “shameful chapter in white Atlanta’s history and painful one for black Atlanta.”
—M. Alexis Scott, CEO and Publisher, Atlanta Daily World
“Rebecca Burns’ Rage in the Gate City ably brings to life the 1906 Atlanta Race Riot, a seminal event in the city’s history, yet one that has largely been forgotten. In so doing, she provides a valuable service for Atlantans today.”
Dr. Clifford Kuhn, Associate Professor of History, Georgia State University
“Rebecca Burns’s account of Atlanta’s 1906 race riot brings one of the city’s most critical pieces of history to vivid and concise life. Although it is a slender volume, it tells a big story successfully and well. The seeds of Atlanta’s racial comity and the roots of its racial travails are all here.”
—Steve Oney, author of And the Dead Shall Rise: The Murder of Mary Phagan and the Lynching of Leo Frank