Suburban erasure : how the suburbs ended the civil rights movement in New Jersey / Walter David Greason.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Greason, Walter.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

African Americans--Civil rights--New Jersey--History--20th century.

African Americans.

Civil rights movements--New Jersey--History--20th century.

Civil rights movements.

African American civil rights workers--New Jersey--History--20th century.

African American civil rights workers.

Suburbs--New Jersey--History--20th century.

Suburbs.

Segregation--New Jersey--History--20th century.

Segregation.

Race relations.

History.

African Americans--Civil rights.

New Jersey--Race relations--History--20th century.

New Jersey.

Physical Description:

v, 215 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Madison [New Jersey] : Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, [2013]

Summary:

For generations, historians believed the study of the African American experience centered on questions about the processes and consequences of enslavement. Even after this phase passed, the modern civil rights movement took center stage and filled hundreds of pages, creating a new framework for understanding the history of both the United States and the world. Suburban Erasure, by Walter David Greason, contributes to the most recent developments in historical writing by recovering dozens of previously undiscovered works about the African American experience in New Jersey. More importantly, his interpretation of these documents complicates the traditional understandings about the Great Migration, civil rights activism, and the transformation of the United States as a global, economic superpower. Greason details the voices of black men and women whose vision and sacrifices made the dream of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. possible. Then, in the second half of this study, the limitations of this dream of integration become clear as New Jersey-a state that took the lead in showing America how to overcome the racism of the past-fell victim to a recurring pattern of color-blindness that entrenched the legacy of racial inequality in the consumer economy of the late twentieth century. Suburbanization simultaneously erased the physical architecture of rural segregation in New Jersey and ideologically obscured the deepening, persistent injustices that became the war on drugs and the prison-industrial complex. Greason's solution for the twenty-first century involves the most fundamental effort to racially integrate state and local governments conceived since the Reconstruction era. Suburban Erasure is a must-read for people concerned with democracy, human rights, and the future of civil society. Book jacket.

Contents:

Family Life

Black Women's Historiography

Leadership

Churches and Schools

Civil Rights Beginnings

Civil Rights Endings

Resistance and Denial

Suburban Regions

Race and Consumption

Metropolitan Poverty

Metropolitan Growth and Exclusion.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781611475708

1611475708

OCLC:

809616006