At 9 years old, former Atlanta Mayor Sam Massell operated a successful corner Coca-Cola stand called Bud’s Place, but some days he was even more enterprising than usual.
Buddy, as he was known back then, would sneak a Guinness beer from his father’s refrigerator and sell it on the side.
“It was 100 percent profit,” he said to laughter at an Irish Chamber of Atlanta luncheon at RiRa Irish Pub in Midtown.
Mr. Massell joked that many antics outlined in a 2018 biography — Play It Again, Sam: The Notable Life of Sam Massell, Atlanta’s First Minority Mayor — might’ve prevented him from winning elected office. But he was serious about the theme of the book, that his life has been much more than his brief stint as Atlanta’s first minority (Jewish) mayor in the 1970s.
“It outlines a work ethic from age 9 to age 90,” he said.
Politics, he says, represents only one of four careers he undertook during his 91 packed years so far. His latest — association management — has actually been the longest. Mr. Massell for 30-plus years has led the Buckhead Coalition, which is composed of some 100 CEOs and business owners in the upscale Atlanta district. He only recently gave up going to the office on Sundays at the chiding of his wife of three years, Sandra Gordy.
Politics was a natural evolution after a 20-year stint in commercial real estate got him involved in civic issues. But a spirit of entrepreneurship was ingrained in Mr. Massell from a young age.
“My father never said, ‘Buddy, you have to work.’ It was what was expected. It was what you did.”
[pullquote]“I’m not planning to run again. I’m only 91, so I’ve got plenty of time to think about it.”[/pullquote]
His first real job was in publishing: a trade magazine for a national sales association for children’s clothing retailers. He got fired, but not for underperforming. His boss felt he needed to move up in the world and marched him to a friend’s real estate office.
But it was Mr. Massell’s time as mayor that solidified his local legacy. He took office at a time of turbulent racial integration, just after the thick of the civil rights movement and two years after the assassination of Atlanta’s native son and civil-rights icon, Martin Luther King Jr.
Though he ran against a black opponent, he left City Hall having changed its racial makeup, appointing many blacks as department heads and pushing for the first woman to join the Atlanta City Council. He was succeeded by his own vice mayor, Maynard H. Jackson Jr., and Atlanta hasn’t had a white mayor since.
Being Jewish, Mr. Massell admitted that he never experienced the same level of outright racism and discrimination as his black friends. But he got enough of a taste to know he needed to be a voice against it.
Shane Stephens, Ireland’s consul general in Atlanta, said at the lunch that Mr. Massell’s leadership in solidifying the city’s “too busy to hate” reputation during this period of transition is in large part why there is an Irish consulate here today.
Mr. Massell believes a lot of Atlanta’s success, especially versus other Southern cities like Birmingham, Ala., is due to young, progressive leaders and developers who were “standing up for things that were not only morally right but admittedly financially right. They could show where this meant success and profit in their pockets. Money speaks. Ambassador [Andrew] Young will tell you in a hurry that green is the most important color to them, not black, not white.”
Mr. Massell also introduced the idea of a sales tax to pay for MARTA, the city’s mass transit network, famously hovering in a helicopter over the interstate shouting, “If you want to get out of this mess, vote yes.”
“This being the Bible Belt, they thought God was telling them what to do, but we took every vote that we could get and it passed,” he said.
He sees heady times for mass transit ahead in Atlanta.
“It took a long time before the business community agreed to build and use MARTA,” he said in response to a Global Atlanta question. “They shied away from it. They were scared of it. They thought it brought a bad element, in many cases, but today it’s very valuable being next to a MARTA stop. They all want it. Everybody does. You’re going to see great steps of progress in MARTA in the near future.”
One of Mr. Massell’s motivations for the book was to set the record straight on periods of his life that have been examined over the years.
But Charles McNair, the author who did the writing after a year of weekly one-hour interviews with Mr. Massell, refused to do a puff piece. He wanted the “warts as well as winnings” represented, Mr. Massell said.
“It’s not your usual biography,” said Mr. McNair, who was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for his first novel. “I tried to write it colorfully and capture the time when Sam lived and the man he was during his life.”
That color wasn’t hard to get: “Getting quotes from Sam is like shooting fish in a barrel,” Mr. McNair added.
Mr. Massell joked that he’s able to be honest now that he has no further political ambitions — as of yet.
“I’m not planning to run again. I’m only 91, so I’ve got plenty of time to think about it.”
Buy the book here.
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