Racial Controversy
Maynard Jackson provoked his first major racial crisis in May 1974 when he attempted to fire the incumbent white police chief, John Inman. Atlanta's growing crime problem and charges of racial insensitivity toward African Americans prompted Jackson's decision. The firing increased racial tensions within the city and detracted from Atlanta's proud motto: "too busy to hate." Another controversy followed in August 1974 when Mayor Jackson appointed a college crony and African American activist to become public safety commissioner. The new commissioner, A. Reginald Eaves, lacked police experience and created a great deal of controversy when he appointed an ex-convict as his personal secretary and began a system of quota promotions and hiring in the police department, which many decried as "reverse discrimination." Despite the outcry Eaves remained in his post and, by the spring of 1976, Atlanta experienced a drop in crime rates. However, Jackson was forced to fire Eaves after a police exam cheating scandal was uncovered. Eaves was later convicted by a federal jury of extortion in 1988 after he was caught selling his vote on two rezonings.
Read more about this topic: Maynard Jackson
Famous quotes containing the words racial and/or controversy:
“I am convinced that our American society will become more and more vulgarized and that it will be fragmentized into contending economic, racial and religious pressure groups lacking in unity and common will, unless we can arrest the disintegration of the family and of community solidarity.”
—Agnes E. Meyer (1887–1970)
“And therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord, set up for right Reason, the Reason of some Arbitrator, or Judge, to whose sentence, they will both stand, or their controversy must either come to blows, or be undecided, for want of a right Reason constituted by Nature; so is it also in all debates of what kind soever.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)