William Berry Hartsfield papers

William Berry Hartsfield (March 1, 1890-February 22, 1971), attorney, politician, and mayor of Atlanta was born in Atlanta, Georgia, the son of Charles Green Hartsfield, a tinsmith, and Victoria Dagnall Hartsfield. He married Pearl Williams on August 2, 1913 and they had two children, William Berry Hartsfield, Jr. and Mildred Hartsfield Cheshire. They divorced after forty-eight years of marriage and Hartsfield married Tollie Tolan on July 11, 1962. He later adopted her son, Carl.

Hartsfield attended Boys High School in Atlanta and found employment as a clerk for the General Fire Extinguisher Company. In 1916, while working as a clerk for the legal firm of Rosser, Slaton, Phillips, and Hopkins, he began reading law. His formal education was completed in 1937, when the Atlanta Law School awarded him a Bachelor of Law degree. Hartsfield was admitted to the Georgia Bar in 1917 and established a practice in Atlanta. His first entrance into the political arena came in 1923, with his election to the City Council of Atlanta. He remained a council member until 1928. During this time, he served on the municipal airport committee and helped arrange the purchase of Candler Field as the site for the city's first municipal airport. The Hartsfield International Airport is named in his honor.

From 1933 to 1937, Hartsfield served as a Fulton County Representative to the Georgia Legislature. In 1936, he defeated incumbent Mayor James L. Key in the first of the seven mayoral elections he entered. With the exception of an eighteen-month period in 1941-1942, Hartsfield served as the city's chief administrator continuously from 1937 to 1962. As mayor, Hartsfield saw the city more than triple in land area, grow to have over a million inhabitants, and survive the Depression and World War II fiscally sound and ready to undertake such civic improvements as building expressways and city parks. An early racial moderate, he guided the city through the 1950s and the beginnings of the Civil Rights Movement. Hartsfield also served as an officer in two mining companies, the Southern Talc Company of Atlanta and Chatsworth, Georgia (1933-1942) and the Georgia Lightweight Aggregate Company (1951-1954). Throughout most of his life, he maintained an interest in Georgia's mineral development.

Following Hartsfield's retirement from city government in 1962, he was named Mayor Emeritus and became a consultant to the Ford Foundation's Committee of Review and Evaluation, Urban Program; to the Rockefeller Foundation's Performing Arts Panel; and to the Coca Cola Company. He was also named president of the Southeastern Fair Association. A life-long member of the First Baptist Church of Atlanta, Hartsfield was also a Democrat, a Mason, and a Shriner. Among the many honors he received were honorary Doctorate of Law degrees from Oglethorpe University and Atlanta University, both in 1961.