Hundreds of citizens joined Atlanta Mayor Bill Campbell July 15 at city hall to express their support for the city’s affirmative action program. To a cheering crowd Mayor Campbell proclaimed, "We will fight to the death. There will be no compromise."

Atlanta’s race-based preference system has recently come under fire from the Southeastern Legal Foundation, a regional public interest group. The program was started in 1975 when less than one percent of city contracts were awarded to minority owned companies. Today, the city has set the goal for contracts to minority owned companies at thirty-five percent.

Foundation President Matthew Griffin, however, claims that the system of race-based preferences violates the 14th Amendment. This same argument has been used in many cases across the country and all with the same result: rulings against affirmative action programs.

The foundation itself has already won victories in the 1990s in Jacksonville, FL and in Georgia’s DeKalb and Fulton Counties. In each case the judge stated that the programs failed to show a clear pattern of discrimination against minority owned companies.

Mayor Campbell, once the only black child in his school, has said that he would rather go to jail than see the Atlanta’s affirmative action programs ended.

The foundation informed the City of Atlanta June 14 that it would file suit if the program had not been ended voluntarily in 30 days. The program had played a large role in the granting of construction contracts for the 1996 Olympics facilities.