The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit

Thomas J. Sugrue

Princeton University Press, Aug 1, 2005 - History - 375 pages

Once America's "arsenal of democracy," Detroit over the last fifty years has become the symbol of the American urban crisis. In this reappraisal of racial and economic inequality in modern America, Thomas Sugrue explains how Detroit and many other once prosperous industrial cities have become the sites of persistent racialized poverty. He challenges the conventional wisdom that urban decline is the product of the social programs and racial fissures of the 1960s. Probing beneath the veneer of 1950s prosperity and social consensus, Sugrue traces the rise of a new ghetto, solidified by changes in the urban economy and labor market and by racial and class segregation.

In this provocative revision of postwar American history, Sugrue finds cities already fiercely divided by race and devastated by the exodus of industries. He focuses on urban neighborhoods, where white working-class homeowners mobilized to prevent integration as blacks tried to move out of the crumbling and overcrowded inner city. Weaving together the history of workplaces, unions, civil rights groups, political organizations, and real estate agencies, Sugrue finds the roots of today's urban poverty in a hidden history of racial violence, discrimination, and deindustrialization that reshaped the American urban landscape after World War II.

In a new preface, Sugrue discusses the ongoing legacies of the postwar transformation of urban America and engages recent scholars who have joined in the reassessment of postwar urban, political, social, and African American history.

What people are saying

Review: The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit

User Review  - David Bates - Goodreads

In his 1996 work The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit Thomas Sugrue focused on the implications of the racism in the residential and labor markets of Detroit for the ...

Review: The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit

User Review  - Alessandra - Goodreads

Prior to Thomas J. Sugrue's landmark publication, popular appraisals of America's urban crisis wedded urban decline to globalization, corporate outsourcing, and the oil crises of the 1970s. The ...

Contents

• Arsenal of Democracy: 17
• Detroits Time Bomb Race and Housing in the 1940s: 33
• The Coffin of Peace The Containment of Public Housing: 57
• RUST: 89
• The Meanest and Dirtiest Jobs The Structures of Employment Discrimination: 91
• The Damning Mark of False Prosperities The Deindustrialization of Detroit: 125
• Forget about Your Inalienable Right to Work Responses to Industrial Decline and Discrimination: 153
• FIRE: 179
• Class Status and Residence The Changing Geography of Black Detroit: 181
• Homeowners Rights White Resistance and the Rise of Antiliberalism: 209
• United Communities Are Impregnable Violence and the Color Line: 231
• Detroit and the Fate of Postindustrial America: 259
• Index of Dissimilarity Blacks and Whites in Major American Cities 19401990: 273
• African American Occupational Structure i Detroit 19401970: 275
• List of Abbreviations in the Notes: 279
• Notes: 281
• Index: 365

About the author

Thomas J. Sugrue is Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Professor of History and Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit; Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparative Perspectives; Princeton classic editions; Princeton studies in American politics; SOE Curriculum Lab
• Author: Thomas J. Sugrue
• Edition: illustrated, reprint, revised
• Publisher: Princeton University Press, 2005
• ISBN: 0691121869, 9780691121864
• Length: 375 pages
• Subjects: History / Modern / 20th Century; History / United States / 20th Century; Political Science / Public Policy / City Planning & Urban Development; Social Science / Sociology / Urban