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Managing Inequality: Northern Racial Liberalism in Interwar Detroit PDF

344 Pages·2016·2.888 MB·English
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Managing Inequality This page intentionally left blank Managing Inequality Northern Racial Liberalism in Interwar Detroit Karen R. Miller a NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS New York and London NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS New York and London www.nyupress.org © 2015 by New York University All rights reserved References to Internet websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor New York University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Miller, Karen R. Managing inequality : Northern racial liberalism in interwar Detroit / Karen R. Miller. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4798-8009-6 (cloth : acid-free paper) 1.  Detroit (Mich.)--Race relations--History--20th century. 2.  Detroit (Mich.)--Politics and government--20th century. 3.  African Americans--Civil rights--Michigan-- Detroit--History--20th century. 4.  African Americans--Michigan--Detroit--Social conditions--20th century. 5.  Liberalism--Michigan--Detroit--History--20th century. 6.  Equality--Government policy--Michigan--Detroit--History--20th century. 7.  Detroit (Mich.)--Economic conditions--20th century.  I. Title. F574.D49A25 2014 308.896’07307743409042--dc23 2014024575 New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability. We strive to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the greatest extent possible in publishing our books. Manufactured in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Also available as an ebook Contents Acknowledgments vii Introduction 1 1 African American Migration and the Emerging Discourse of Northern Racial Liberalism 24 2 Protecting Urban Peace: Northern Racial Liberalism and the Limits of Racial Equality 64 3 Between Ossian Sweet and the Great Depression: Tolerance and Northern Racial Liberal Discourse in the Late 1920s 97 4 “Living Happily at the Taxpayers’ Expense”: City Managers, African American “Freeloaders,” and White Taxpayers 129 5 “Let Us Act Funny”: Snow Flake Grigsby and Civil Rights Liberalism in the 1930s 163 6 Northern Racial Liberalism and Detroit’s Labor Movement 205 7 “Better Housing Makes Better Citizens”: Slum Clearance and Low-Cost Housing 237 Conclusion 262 Notes 273 Bibliography 305 Index 317 About the Author 331 >> v This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgments This project has been a long time in the making. It began in the Shaker Heights, Ohio, of my childhood in the 1970s and 1980s. A self- consciously liberal, affluent, and integrated inner-ring suburb, Shaker Heights was known for its good schools, winding streets, and anti – white flight programs: low-interest loans designed to integrate neigh- borhoods, robust busing, and ordinances against blockbusting. But the city’s liberalism and its pro-integration policies did not eliminate segregation or stratification, even locally. In spite of busing, elementary schools in the city’s wealthiest neighborhoods were majority white, and those that sat next to Cleveland were almost all black. By high school, tracking by race and class was intense. Available explanations felt inadequate: we were taught that rac- ism was a relic left over from slavery, rooted in the American South, mostly a problem of the past, and something that was already fading away. Or, it was a failing of individuals who had absorbed toxic ideas and needed them purged. Shaker Heights was certainly more integrated than neighboring towns, and as I came to understand later in life, its racial progressivism and limited residential integration were quite rare for suburban America. But contradictions remained between the racial liberalism it espoused and the persistence of inequalities in wealth and schooling, even very locally. This book is my effort to understand why. Archivists and staff members at the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan, the Walter P. Reuther Library of Labor and Urban Affairs at Wayne State University, the Burton Historical Col- lection at the Detroit Public Library, the Library of Congress, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Pub- lic Library went out of their way to help me find materials relevant to my interests. I am indebted to Debbie Gershenowitz, who acquired the >> vii viii << Acknowledgments book for NYU Press, and to Clara Platter and Constance Grady, who saw it through production. I am grateful for two incisive reviews that helped me reshape and strengthen the manuscript from Kevin Boyle and a reviewer who remains anonymous. Richard Thomas generously allowed me to use a map he dug out of his files, and I am thankful for that act of kindness. I would also like to thank Gianluca Vassallo for letting me use a photograph, part of his “Free Portrait” project, as my author photo. I began to write about the history of Detroit as an undergradu- ate at the University of Michigan. I was incredibly fortunate to have Elsa Barkely Brown and Robin D. G. Kelley guide me through my undergraduate thesis and shape my thinking about the city and its racial dynamics. Graduate school faculty, including my adviser, Terry McDonald, and a committee that included Matthew Countryman, Earl Lewis, Hannah Rosen, and Heather Thompson, provided me with mod- els of engaged and careful scholarship after which I modeled my own. Each of them helped sharpen the questions I was asking and the book that ultimately emerged. Friends and faculty in Ann Arbor, whom I met through the university, through activism, and through local networks, also contributed to my thinking and provided me with invaluable sup- port and camaraderie. Thanks go to Chris Cassell, Leland Davis, Angela Dillard, Clara Kawanishi, Sarah Jessup, Tamara Joseph, Christine Kel- ley, Kate Masur, Regina Morantz-Sanchez, Alyssa Picard, and Nick Syrett. In 1997, I moved to Detroit and was fortunate to meet people who introduced me to the city and became my friends and comrades. Glen Bessemer, Dianne Feeley, Jessica LaBumbard, Peter Landon, Kris- tin Palm, Jenny Schmidt, Dave Schroeder, Matt Siegfriend, Jane Slaugh- ter, and especially Jana Cephas, Mark Dilley, and Lori Stark helped me navigate Detroit and understand its many geographies. In 2003, I moved to New York. A welcoming group of old and new friends and colleagues help me rethink and refine this project. David Kazanjian generously read an early draft of the manuscript and offered helpful advice about how to proceed. Both formal and informal writ- ing groups with colleagues at the City University of New York were an essential part of the revision process. Carolina Bank Munoz, Stephen Steinberg, Celina Su, Saadia Toor, and Nicole Trujillo-Pagan all offered invaluable feedback. I am grateful to the many friends, colleagues, and Acknowledgments >> ix comrades in New York and elsewhere who have listened to me work through my ideas over dinner, coffee, work dates, and playdates, as well as those who have provided a respite from thinking about this project: Kelly Anderson, Moustafa Bayoumi, Padmini Biswas, Shelley Curnow, Kristen Gallagher, Mary Greenfield, Alyssa Katz, Robin Kietlinski, Emily Kohner, Jude Koski, Allison Miller, Sarah Miller, Charlie Post, Deb Reichman, Kirsten Scheid, Brooke Smith, and Chloe Tribich. Phyllis van Slyck has fed my son, Oscar, and me countless delicious Sunday dinners and whisked us away to the beach. She, Laura Tanen- baum, and Arianna Martinez have helped me feel at home at LaGuar- dia Community College. Michelle Billies, another CUNY colleague and friend, has been encouraging and interested in my work. I have known Liza Featherstone since I was an undergraduate, and we have been talking about these questions since we first met. Doug Henwood has whipped up fabulous delicacies over which we complain about poli- tics and the Left. My cousin Sarah Miller wrote her senior thesis about Detroit as well; she served as an invaluable research assistant when I was finishing graduate school. Rebeca Carrion was Oscar’s caregiver for two years, and I am indebted to her for her enthusiasm and generosity. Mary LuAllen has made this project possible by helping me analyze and understand my relationship to its content and production. I have also been honored to have had excellent students at LaGuardia Community College ask me provocative questions about cities, race, and history and push me to clarify my claims. One of them, Anthony Salcedo, worked as my research assistant. I look forward to reading his scholarship in the near future. I feel very lucky and deeply grateful to have a full-time academic job that provides me with a living wage, summers off, job security, and a day job that is related to my intellectual pursuits. Other funding has also been crucial. Grants from CUNY’s Faculty Fellowships Publica- tions Program, the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics at the CUNY Graduate Center, and the PSC-CUNY Research Award Program have released me from teaching and allowed me to focus on my writing. I finished a major round of revisions when I was on sabbatical and in residence at the Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies at the Uni- versity of Michigan. Funding from the Educational Development Ini- tiative Team’s Professional Development Grant Program at LaGuardia

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