Author: Harvey K. Newman

Publisher: University Alabama Press

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 392

ISBN-13:

Newman shows how the cultural tradition of hospitality has encouraged the growth of Atlanta's convention and tourist industry and contributed to the city's rapid development. Harvey Newman finds that the international attention Atlanta enjoys because of its recent hosting of the Olympics is actually the culmination of a tradition of boosterism that dates back to antebellum times and the central place of hospitality within southern culture. Newman's study considers how social forces, historic events, and major entrepreneurs have influenced Atlanta's commercial development. Throughout the city's history, Newman observes, the value of southern hospitality has ensured ongoing support for efforts to develop hospitality as a commercial enterprise. Newman calls particular attention to how issues of race, gender, ethnicity, and class have affected the development of the Atlanta hospitality industry. African Americans traditionally provided much of the labor for the industry, first as slaves who cooked, cleaned, carried bags, and shined shoes at railroad inns and later as workers in the restaurants and hotels established in the central city. Segregation led African Americans to develop their own commercial areas and business districts. In the early years, women--black and white--found that hospitality was one of the few industries in which they were allowed to work: white widows often ran boarding houses, and black women found work cooking and cleaning in hotels and restaurants. Although the transformation of downtown Atlanta into a tourist and convention center has provided jobs for many residents, Newman concludes that people in the central city--mostly African Americans--have not shared equally in the region's overall economic growth. Instead, Newman considers the division and tension between downtown and the suburbs, and he questions whether the city should continue to make large public investments in hospitality businesses that are available in other localities and do not reflect the region's specific culture. Instead, Newman suggests the city invest in smaller projects, especially those that emphasize the culture of the South and those that aim to revitalize African American neighborhoods and promote the culture of the South shared by blacks and whites.