The Atlanta Youth Murders and the Politics of Race

Bernard Headley examines the political and racial elements surrounding a catastrophic period in the history of one of the South's most progressive cities. Between the summer of 1979 and the spring of 1981, a killer terrorized Atlanta. Some thirty black youths, twenty-eight males and two females, were reported missing, and the bodies of twenty-nine murder victims were eventually found in and around the city. Atlanta appeared often on the nightly news, burning what came to be known as the "Atlanta tragedy" into the national consciousness. Drawing on years of research and countless interviews, Headley analyzes the complex political and ideological issues of race and class that dominated the events surrounding the mysterious Atlanta youth murders. His objective is to put the interweaving and often conflicting details in historical perspective and, from a sociological point of view, to chronologically recall a set of events that were inextricably tied to a larger American dynamic.