Flashback Photos: Dr. Alonzo Crim, first black APS superintendent
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The weight of racial history was on Alonzo Crim's shoulders when he came from California in 1973 to run Atlanta's public schools. White flight had replaced a white majority with more than 80 percent black enrollment. As soon as Crim arrived, Congressman Andrew Young invited him to a three-day meeting with civil rights leaders, who made him feel as if he were on the witness stand, Crim later wrote. Atlanta was the desegregation case they were watching. Crim felt he disappointed the civil rights veterans when he told them he was merely going to build a system "where students would know that people cared about them and help them achieve." -- Doug Cumming, Pete Scott, AJC archives (original run date: May 4, 2000)