For the next couple of days I’ll be blogging from Atlanta, where about 85 business and civic leaders from St. Louis are participating in  a fact-finding trip organized by the  Regional Chamber and Growth Association. The RCGA sponsors these trips about once a year so its members can learn how other cities are dealing with problems and issues that are relevant back home in  the Gateway City.

 From the agenda and from this afternoon’s first session, it’s clear that race relations will be a major focus of this trip. We heard George Berry, a retired deputy mayor of Atlanta, describe how the city started with a slogan — “the city too busy to hate” — and then worked to make it come true. When the slogan was coined in the 1960s, Berry said, “We didn’t have any better race relations than anywhere else … but somehow the slogan became reality.” A key part of the success, he said, is the willingness of black politicians and white business leaders to put aside differences when economic opportunity is at stake.

Kasim Reed, a Georgia state senator, gave the St. Louisans a quick history lesson. Georgia, he noted, elected a progressive governor named Carl Sanders in the 1960s at about the same time as Alabama elected the segregationist George Wallace. Birmingham, Ala., was the industrial hub of the south at the time, but would be eclipsed by Atlanta over the next 20 years. Reed gives a better-known, later governor some of the credit too. “When Jimmy Carter said segregation in the South must end, capital from New York started flowing south,” Reed said. “It flowed to Georgia, and that’s why Georgia has more than 14 Fortune 500 companies now.”
One of the St. Louisans, Armstrong Teasdale partner Steven Cousins, says  his hometown  would do well to learn Atlanta’s lessons.  ”We all know St. Louis is a great city without parallel when it comes to cultural amenities,” Cousins said. “We all know it’s without parallel when it comes to being a great place to raise a family. Why can’t it be without parallel when it comes to dealing with the issue of race?”