- Violence
- Segregation
- June 17–20, 1967
- City of Atlanta
- General area only
The Dixie Hills disturbance (1967)
A fight outside the Flamingo Grill in the Dixie Hills Shopping Center on June 17, 1967 set off several nights of confrontations with police in this west-side neighborhood. On June 20 police fired into a crowd, killing Willie Ross and wounding a 9-year-old boy.
The record
The trouble began when a Black security guard refused a young man, Eddie Wilkins, entry to the grill and a fight broke out; three people were arrested. On June 18 Stokely Carmichael spoke to residents and was arrested; Wikipedia's account, drawn from the Kerner Report, says the crowd later grew to more than 1,000 and police fired over it. On June 20 police fired into a crowd, killing Willie Ross, who Capital B News reports was sitting on his porch, and wounding a 9-year-old boy. The Kerner Commission, which studied the disturbance, described Atlanta as racially progressive but tense, with non-white families earning less than half the median income of white families (as summarized by Wikipedia).
Today: Dixie Hills, a residential neighborhood of northwest Atlanta.