The Atlanta Youth Murders and the Politics of Race Bernard Headley January 2000 ISBN 0-8093-2319-2 | New in Paper | $19.95t 272 pages | 21 illustrations | 6 x 9 Criminology, American History, African American Studies   Also available in cloth   At least twenty-nine black children and young adults were murdered by an Atlanta serial killer between the summer of 1979 and the spring of 1981. Drawing national media attention, the “Atlanta tragedy,” as it became known, was immediately labeled a hate crime. However, when a young black man was arrested and convicted for the killings, public attention quickly shifted. Noted criminologist Bernard Headley was in Atlanta as the tragedy unfolded and provides here a thoughtful exploration of the social and political implications of the case both locally and nationally. Focusing on a singular historical event, Headley exposes broader tensions of race and class in contemporary America.   “In a careful and poignant narrative analysis, [Headley] asks what conjunction of social forces produced twenty-nine murders of impoverished black children during the administration of a black mayor in the South’s most progressive and corporately successful city.  He links Atlanta’s rise to the unraveling of the core city and the ghettoization of violent crime.  A riveting narrative reveals a city of white business royals, black civic princes, and a surplus of black workers and their expendable children.”—Renny Golden, author of Disposable Children   “Bernard Headley has produced a solid piece of work about an important historical event which has wider and more profound implications concerning race and class in the United States. . . .  In my judgment, his explication of the roles of race and class in Atlanta (and by implication the United States) is exactly accurate.”—Richard Allen Morton, Clark Atlanta University   Bernard Headley is a professor of criminology and criminal justice at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago.  A former Senior Fulbright Scholar, Caribbean Regional Lecturing Program, he is the author of The Jamaican Crime Scene: A Perspective.