Welcome to the fifth meeting of this Black Kos-hosted reading group of Thomas Sugrue's
Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North.
Of course, you don't have to be a member of Black Kos to join this discussion; it's open for anybody and the more, the merrier! Come and join us on The Porch every Monday night at 7:30-ish for the next 5 or so weeks.
Tonight, we will be covering Chapters 6 & 7, titled "God Have Pity on Such a City" and "No Right More Elemental," respectively. These chapters cover the very intertwined (initial) battles over segregated schooling and housing discrimination in the North.
Chapter 6: "God Have Pity on Such a City":
Objective Summary: Hillburn, NY school desegregation battle-Black press coverage of Hillburn-"small-town" focus of black activists-grassroots v. legal strategies-complicated argument over integrated schools within black communities-New Jersey-effect of Brown vs. Board of Education decision on segregated northern schools-"neighborhood" schools-What is a "neighborhood"?- New Rochelle, NY school desegregation battle-comparison of New Rochelle to Little Rock
My thoughts: It was difficult to avoid Sugrue's repeated and highly appropriate (and effective) use of the word "subterfuge" in Chapter 6; it is the word which best describes the lengths to which some Northern white politicians were willing to go to maintain racially segregated schools in spite of the law. I also like Sugrue's use of the word "gerrymandering" in the context of "neighborhood" boundaries that were drawn to maintain school segregation (this seems especially true in the case of the battle over desegregation in the Hillburn, NY). It's an important and necessary reminder that there is often a lot more at stake in "gerrymandering" than simply electoral representation.
One has only to look at responses of Hillburn's "patriarch" J. Edgar Davidson and his wife (pp. 166-67) to see that patronizing, paternalistic, bigoted attitudes were quite prevalent in the North.
I also like the emphasis that Sugrue places throughout SLOL and especially in Chapter 6 on the importance black female activists in the Northern battle for civil rights.
Prior to reading this book, I was only vaguely aware of some of the discussions within the black civil rights movement prior to the 1960's as to whether school desegregation/integration was even desirable (pp. 170-174). Of course, there was, in part, the model and example of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU's) to build on to a certain extent but it is a bit of an eye-opener to see the extent and the foresight of these discussions that took place prior to Brown v. Board.
And, of course, Sugrue begins the all-important discussion of housing discrimination in this chapter; even in Chapter 5's discussion of racial discrimination in public accommodations, we began to see the importance of housing discrimination whether through drawings of "neighborhood" boundaries (occasionally upheld by white mobs) or "white flight" to suburbia. To this point, this paragraph is the most important paragragh in SLOL:
"The banking practices that denied loans to blacks who wanted to live in white neighborhoods and vice versa, the federal mortgage programs that forbade the introduction of "incompatible" groups into neighborhoods, the tactics of real estate agents who steered blacks into black-dominated or racially transitional neighborhoods-all of these were largely invisible. The visible manifestations of Jim Crow-separate drinking fountains and bathrooms, lynch mobs, white-only elections-these were rare in the mid-twentieth century North...In the North, by contrast, public officials claimed that the separation of races was just a fact of life, not mandated by law or controlled by the state. Whites could deny responsibility for racial segregation, for their choices about where to live and where to send their children to school were individualized and obviously race-neutral. The logical conclusion of this line of reasoning was that it was the natural order of things that the vast majority of whites lived in all-white communities and that blacks were confined to segregated neighborhoods and mostly minority schools. Like lived with like, birds of a feather flocked together. No one was at fault." SLOL, pp. 183-84
Other references:
Seeking Educational Equality in the North: The Integration of the Hillburn School System- A 2015 Arkansas Law Review article by the grandson of T.N. Alexander (p. 165 of SLOL), head of the Hillburn, NY chapter of the NAACP in the 1930's.
School Segregation in the NY -NJ Metropolitan Area
Dear Zora: A letter to Zora Neale Hurston Fifty years after Brown- A 1998 assessment of Zora Neale Hurston's criticism of Brown v. Board published in the Sentinel Orlando August 11, 1955. The entire text of Hurston's letter is on pages 1 & 2.
Chapter 7: "No Right More Elemental":
Objective Summary:- Levittown, PA- racial segregation of northern housing market-New Deal housing programs-restrictive covenants-Shelley v. Kraemer-"ghetto pathologies"-fusion of liberal religion and social science-Quaker activism-Deerfield, Illinois
My comments: I suppose that one weakness of Myrdal's could be characterized as his inability to see the "social engineering" taking place in the North; social engineering that mandated and enforced white supremacy and racial segregation in the North in cases where housing segregation hadn't existed before (p. 201). This northern "social engineering," Sugrue states, "was built on a study foundation of racial restrictions encoded in private regulations and public policy." (p. 202). A case could be made that various New Deal programs along with restrictive covenants segregated the northern housing market; the "invisible hand" of government and business colluded so that northern blacks (many who migrated from the South) remained segregated from northern whites.
But the "fingerprints of public policy" (p. 209) remained.
What's surprising in this chapter is the somewhat one-dimensional view of social scientists of that time that racial segregation induced neuroses in whites and leaves blacks vulnerable to "ghetto pathologies." Just as with Reconstruction, it seems as if little or no thought was given to the possibility that racial integration might have some negative effects, especially as racial hatred has never ceased to be a part of the "American climate."
And yes, I am still absorbing the many and varied happenings in Chapter 7.
Other references:
Social Gospel- Wikipedia page
The Social Gospel and the Progressive Era
The Many Costs of Discrimination: the Case of Middle-class African Americans - Integration and a Hostile Racial Climate