William Berry Hartsfield, Sr. (March 1, 1890 – February 22, 1971), was an American politician who served as the 49th and 51st Mayor of Atlanta, Georgia. His tenure extended from 1937 to 1941 and again from 1942 to 1962, making him the longest-serving mayor of his native Atlanta, Georgia.
Hartsfield is credited with developing Atlanta's airport into a national aviation center and ensuring a good water supply with the completion of the Buford Dam. Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport is named in Hartsfield's honor as well as a later mayor, Maynard Jackson, who led the modernization of the airport in the 1970s.
Ivan Earnest Allen Jr. (March 15, 1911 – July 2, 2003), was an American businessman who served two terms as the 52nd mayor of Atlanta, during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Allen provided pivotal leadership for transforming the segregated and economically stagnant Old South into the progressive New South.
Allen took the helm of the Ivan Allen Company, his father's office supply business, in 1946 and within three years had the company bringing in annual revenues of several millions of dollars. In 1961, he authored a white paper for revitalizing Atlanta. It was adopted by the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce and became the Six Point Forward Atlanta program. This plan would become his roadmap as mayor for creating an economic surge that established the infrastructure, business, education, arts, sports, and international presence that are the foundations for modern Atlanta. Allen was a founding member of Atlanta's influential Commerce Club, which he chaired until his death in 2003. He became president of the city Chamber of Commerce in 1961 and during this same year ran for mayor, defeating the staunch segregationist, Lester Maddox.
Under Mayor Allen's Forward Atlanta program, the city's population grew more than 30 percent. Atlanta ranked in the top ten in the nation in downtown construction, with more than 55 new buildings constructed and 22,000 new jobs created each year. In 1969, Atlanta's unemployment rate at one point plummeted to an astonishing 1.9 percent. Eleven of the city's twelve tallest buildings were constructed during the sixties, and the Atlanta International Airport (now Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport), acquired its first direct international air routes and saw its ranking change from the tenth-busiest airport in the nation to the third-busiest. In an attempt to manage the city's vast increase in traffic, Allen oversaw the early phases of construction of the Interstate 285 perimeter and the Downtown Connector and presided over the creation of the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA), which would take over the old Atlanta Transit system and build the MARTA rail system.
Mayor Allen also played a key role in bringing Major League Sports to Atlanta. In a politically risky move, he backed the construction of the $18 million Atlanta-Fulton Stadium, which attracted the Milwaukee Braves baseball team in 1965, the new NFL franchised Falcons football team in 1966, and the St.Louis Hawks basketball team arrived in 1968.
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