Allen, Ivan Earnest, Jr.

(b. 15 March 1911 in Atlanta, Georgia; d. 2 July 2003 in Sandy Springs, Georgia), mayor of Atlanta from 1962 to 1970; businessman and civic leader who promoted racial moderation and economic expansion in Atlanta while other southern cities aggressively resisted desegregation.

Allen was born at home on West Peachtree Street to Ivan Earnest Allen, Sr., and Irene (Beaumont) Allen. As the only child of an up-and-coming office supply entrepreneur and sometime politician, Allen came of age as his family became increasingly more prominent and successful. Allen attended public schools, graduating from Boys High School. Allen’s leadership skills and intelligence became evident at Georgia Institute of Technology, where he earned high academic honors and served as president of both his senior class and his social fraternity. Allen earned a BS in commerce in 1933 and immediately went to work for the Ivan Allen–Marshall Company, later the Ivan Allen Company, an office supply firm cofounded by his father and Charles M. Marshall. On 1 January 1936 Allen married Louise Richardson. The couple had three sons.

Allen quickly rose to the position of secretary-treasurer of Ivan Allen–Marshall and held several civic and governmental leadership positions before he entered the army in 1942 as a thirty-year-old second lieutenant. Allen served in Atlanta with the quartermaster corps and the Selective Service, rose to the rank of major, and was discharged in August 1945 at the urging of the newly elected governor Ellis Arnall, who wanted Allen to serve as his executive secretary. After several months in the governor’s office and because of Charles M. Marshall’s failing health and Allen’s father’s desire to be less active in the business, Allen resigned to become president of the office supply company. The childless Marshall, who had been associated with Allen, Sr., for a half century, left his portion of the business to Allen, Jr. At this point the company claimed to be one of the ten largest office supply and furniture firms in the United States.

In the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s Allen built his résumé as a businessman, civic leader, and aspiring politician. He served in key positions for the Boy Scouts of America, the Young Men’s Christian Association, the Community Chest, the Rotary Club, and numerous other organizations. Allen served in the administration of Governor Melvin E. Thompson, was a member of the state board of education, and played key roles in the Georgia and Atlanta chambers of commerce. Allen tentatively entered the 1958 gubernatorial race but soon withdrew, concluding that an Atlantan with a moderate reputation stood little chance in Georgia’s primary election system, which was dominated by rural politicians. Two years later Allen became president of the Atlanta chamber of commerce and launched the Forward Atlanta booster program reminiscent of a similar effort led by his father in the 1920s.

In 1961 the long-time mayor William B. Hartsfield, a racial moderate, decided to step down, and Allen entered the race. His main opponent was Lester Maddox, who had run strongly against Hartsfield in 1957 and who had withheld his restaurant, The Pickrick, from the voluntary desegregation pact that Allen had helped negotiate. Allen was heir to the political alliance that Hartsfield had forged between the business community and Atlanta’s growing black electorate. Issues of race and class dominated the campaign, and in comparison with himself, Maddox drew Allen as a liberal, charging, “If you are ready to accept total integration in everything, vote for Ivan Allen, Jr.” When pressed about his own label, Allen told a television audience that he should be “classified as a liberal conservative.” Results of precinct analysis suggested that Maddox won a majority of white ballots, but by sweeping the black and more affluent white voters, Allen prevailed.

In many cities throughout the South, business leaders of the late 1950s and 1960s sought to avoid racial confrontations because such interactions were bad for business. Atlanta with Allen at the helm was perhaps the quintessential manifestation of this approach. As a young man Allen had never seriously questioned the jim crow laws and the general milieu of white supremacy. Allen initially had joined the chorus of white southern disgust at the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, but he gradually moderated his attitude and eventually came to support change. As early as 1958 Allen publicly cautioned about the negative effects of massive resistance, and in 1960 and 1961 he supported the recommendations of the Sibley Commission to keep Georgia public schools viable in the face of desegregation.

As mayor, Allen desegregated services at the Atlanta city hall, hired the municipality’s first black firemen, and changed the regulation that had restricted black policemen from arresting white suspects. Allen drew national attention by being the only prominent elected white politician from the South to testify in favor of the bill that became the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Allen was easily reelected mayor of Atlanta in 1965, again carrying almost all of the black vote and this time earning a bare majority of the white vote as well. In the same election, the city elected its first black alderman of the twentieth century.

Buoyed by behind-the-scenes support from the Coca-Cola executive Robert Woodruff, Allen made sure that Atlanta honored the civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., with an interracial banquet celebrating King’s being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. Four years later when King was assassinated, Allen worked closely with the King family to arrange a huge and peaceful funeral. Atlanta was spared the major riots that flared in several cities following King’s death, and when a disturbance did arise in south Atlanta a few days after the King funeral, Allen risked his own safety and earned respect by personally going into the streets to appeal for calm. Although he made positive efforts, Allen lost credibility with civil rights supporters because of his efforts to forestall neighborhood integration. Many black leaders believed the mayor was changing things far too slowly in a city that was nearing a black majority population. By the standards of other major southern cities, however, Atlanta under Allen’s eight years was an oasis of moderation.

Many historians argue that the reputation for racial moderation begun by Hartsfield and carried forward by Allen and later mayors Sam Massell, Maynard Jackson, and Andrew Young was responsible for the boom years that propelled metropolitan Atlanta far beyond its traditional rival cities such as Memphis, Tennessee; New Orleans; and Birmingham, Alabama. The six-point plan that Allen helped craft in 1960 as part of the Forward Atlanta program guided his administration. One point was to have Atlanta become the South’s first big-league sports city, and it did. Major League Baseball and National Football League teams arrived in 1966, and a National Basketball Association team made its appearance two years later. During Allen’s tenure, the city built a new civic center and erected an impressive arts center in memory of the 106 local arts patrons who had died in the crash of a charter jet in Paris. Allen’s administration laid the groundwork for expressway, mass transit, and airport expansions that would come to fruition under his successors.

Allen remained president of his company while mayor but elevated himself to chairman in 1970. He served in that position until retiring in 1995. In 1999 the office supply division was sold to Staples, but Ivan Allen Workspace continued to furnish office interiors under the leadership of Allen’s son. In addition to presiding over the business, the former mayor used his calming influence as a senior statesman and quietly supported his wife’s many civic causes, especially the Atlanta Historical Society and the Atlanta Botanical Garden. Allen’s death in Sandy Springs on 2 July 2003 came only a few days after that of his old nemesis Lester Maddox. Allen is buried in Westview Cemetery, Atlanta.

Allen’s autobiography is Ivan Allen, Jr., with Paul Hemp-hill, Mayor: Notes on the Sixties (1971). Gary M. Pomerantz, Where Peachtree Meets Sweet Auburn (1996), interweaves the stories of the families of mayors Allen and Maynard Jackson. Allen is prominently featured in Clarence N. Stone, Regime Politics: Governing Atlanta 1946–1988 (1989); Frederick Allen, Atlanta Rising: The Invention of an International City 1946–1996 (1996); and Ronald H. Bayor, Race and the Shaping of Twentieth-Century Atlanta (1996). Harold H. Martin, Atlanta and Environs, volume 3 (1987) contains a year-by-year account of the 1940s to 1960s. Obituaries are in the Los Angeles Times and New York Times (both 3 July 2003).

Bradley R. Rice