The Origins of the Urban Crisis

Winner of the 1998 Bancroft Prize in American History Winner of the 1997 Philip Taft Prize in Labor History Winner of the 1996 President's Book Award, Social Science History Association Winner of the 1997 Best Book in North American Urban History Award, Urban History Association One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 1997 Praise for Princeton's previous edition:"[Sugrue's] disciplined historical engagement with a complex, often inglorious, past offers a compelling model for understanding how race and the Rust Belt converged to create the current impasse."--America Praise for Princeton's previous edition: "A splendid book that does no less than transform our understanding of United States history after 1940."--Labor History Praise for Princeton's previous edition: "[A] first-rate account ... With insight and elegance, Sugrue describes the street-by-street warfare to maintain housing values against the perceived encroachment of blacks trying desperately to escape the underbuilt and overcrowded slums."--Choice Praise for Princeton's previous edition: "Perhaps by offering a clearer picture of how the urban crisis began, Sugrue brings us a bit closer to finding a way to end it."--In These Times Praise for Princeton's previous edition: "[T]he most interesting, informative, and provocative book on modern Detroit."--Detroit Free Press Praise for Princeton's previous edition: "Superbly researched and engagingly written."--Reviews in American History Praise for Princeton's previous edition: "[A] devastating critique of the currently fashionable 'culture of poverty' thesis. Must reading for anyone concerned about the current urban crisis."--Jacqueline Jones, Lingua Franca

Thomas J. Sugrue is the David Boies Professor of History and Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Not Even Past: Barack Obama and the Burden of Race (Princeton) and Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North.

List of Illustrations ix List of Tables xiii Preface to the Princeton Classics Edition xv Preface to the 2005 Paperback Edition xxxii Acknowledgments li Introduction 3 PART ONE: ARSENAL 15 1. "Arsenal of Democracy" 17 2. "Detroit's Time Bomb": Race and Housing in the 1940s 33 3. "The Coffin of Peace": The Containment of Public Housing 57 PART TWO: RUST 89 4. "The Meanest and the Dirtiest Jobs": The Structures of Employment Discrimination 91 5. "The Damning Mark of False Prosperities": The Deindustrialization of Detroit 125 6. "Forget about Your Inalienable Right to Work": Responses to Industrial Decline and Discrimination 153 PART THREE: FIRE 179 7. Class, Status, and Residence: The Changing Geography of Black Detroit 181 8. "Homeowners' Rights": White Resistance and the Rise of Antiliberalism 209 9. "United Communities Are Impregnable": Violence and the Color Line 231 Conclusion. Crisis: Detroit and the Fate of Postindustrial America 259 Appendixes A. Index of Dissimilarity, Blacks and Whites in Major American Cities, 1940-1990 273 B. African American Occupational Structure in Detroit, 1940-1970 275 List of Abbreviations in the Notes 279 Notes 281 Index 365