Urban poverty and racial inequality in a post civil rights sunbelt community : the political and economic implications of Atlanta's Vine City, 1990

This study is an examination of urban poverty in a post industrial, post Civil Rights African American community in Atlanta Georgia. It explores questions raised by the contemporary literature on urban poverty, and tests the basic assumptions of three sociological perspectives: Afrocentricism, Class Structuralism and Behavioralism. The methodology involves rigorous open-ended interviews obtained through "snowball" sampling techniques. The subjects interviewed include disadvantaged and impoverished inhabitants of the community and institutional and political leaders and activists who are knowledgeable concerning the history of the community. It was concluded that, contrary to traditional "top down" methodological strategies for examining poverty, a "grass roots", or "bottom up" perspective can be constructed through direct interaction with impoverished individuals. This perspective differs from the ones advanced by the contemporary literature.