Making good neighbors : civil rights, liberalism, and integration in postwar Philadelphia / / Abigail Perkiss

• Autore: Perkiss Abigail <1981->
• Pubblicazione: Ithaca, New York : , : Cornell University Press, , 2014; ©2014
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (248 p.)
• Disciplina: 305.8009748/11
• Soggetto topico: Civil rights - Pennsylvania - Philadelphia - History - 20th century; Liberalism - Pennsylvania - Philadelphia - History - 20th century
• Soggetto geografico: Philadelphia (Pa.) Race relations; Mount Airy (Philadelphia, Pa.)
• Note generali: Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references and index.
• Nota di contenuto: Front matter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- List of Abbreviations -- Introduction: Civil Rights' Stepchild -- 1. "A Home of One's Own": The Battle over Residential Space in Twentieth- Century America -- 2. Finding Capital in Diversity: The Creation of Racially Integrated Space -- 3. Marketing Integration: Interracial Living in the White Imagination -- 4. Integration, Separation, and the Fight for Black Identity -- 5. "Well- Trained Citizens and Good Neighbors": Educating an Integrated America -- 6. Confrontations in Black and White: The Crisis of Integration -- 7. The Choice to Live Differently: Reimagining Integration at Century's End -- Epilogue: West Mount Airy and the Legacy of Integration -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index
• Sommario/riassunto: In the 1950's and 1960's, as the white residents, real estate agents, and municipal officials of many American cities fought to keep African Americans out of traditionally white neighborhoods, Philadelphia's West Mount Airy became one of the first neighborhoods in the nation where residents came together around a community-wide mission toward intentional integration. As West Mount Airy experienced transition, homeowners fought economic and legal policies that encouraged white flight and threatened the quality of local schools, seeking to find an alternative to racial separation without knowing what they would create in its place. In Making Good Neighbors, Abigail Perkiss tells the remarkable story of West Mount Airy, drawing on archival research and her oral history interviews with residents to trace their efforts, which began in the years following World War II and continued through the turn of the twenty-first century. The organizing principles of neighborhood groups like the West Mount Airy Neighbors Association (WMAN) were fundamentally liberal and emphasized democracy, equality, and justice; the social, cultural, and economic values of these groups were also decidedly grounded in middle-class ideals and white-collar professionalism. As Perkiss shows, this liberal, middle-class framework would ultimately become contested by more militant black activists and from within WMAN itself, as community leaders worked to adapt and respond to the changing racial landscape of the 1960's and 1970's. The West Mount Airy case stands apart from other experiments in integration because of the intentional, organized, and long-term commitment on the part of WMAN to biracial integration and, in time, multiracial and multiethnic diversity. The efforts of residents in the 1950's and 1960's helped to define the neighborhood as it exists today.
• Titolo autorizzato: Making good neighbors
• ISBN: 0-8014-7085-4
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Record Nr.: 9910820636303321
• Lo trovi qui: Univ. Federico II