History UnderfootAtlanta
  • Park
  • Segregation
  • 1948–1954
  • City of Atlanta
  • General area only

Mozley Park: the fight over a neighborhood and its park (1948–1954)

A white neighborhood west of Ashby Street became the city's first large test of white flight. After Black families bought homes, white residents organized, the mayor tried to set a color line, and in 1954 the city turned the park over for Black use.

See it on the map All Segregation records

The record

In 1948 William A. Scott Jr., son of the Atlanta Daily World's founder, built a house at Mozley Place and Chappell Road; white neighbors treated it as encroachment and began to sell. In 1949 white residents formed the Mozley Park Home Owners' Protective Association to buy back homes and set a 'voluntary' boundary for 'Negro expansion'. The housing shortage in Black areas made selling profitable, and in September 1951 Black real-estate brokers advertised a mass listing of Mozley Park homes in the Daily World. Mayor Hartsfield asked the brokers to treat Westview Drive as the line and later proposed a six-lane highway along it. By 1954 the city designated the neighborhood park for Black use and the transition was essentially complete (Wikipedia, drawing on Kruse).

Today: Mozley Park and its neighborhood, which is listed on the National Register as a historic district. I-20 runs along its southern side.