Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1- The Outskirts of Town: The Geography of Black Suburbanization before 1940
Chapter 2- "Who Set You Flowin’?": The Great Migration, Race, and Work in the Suburbs
Chapter 3- Places of Their Own: An African American Suburban Dream
Chapter 4- "Forbidden Neighbors": White Racism and Black Suburbanites, 1940-1960
Chapter 5- Driving a Wedge of Opportunity: Black Suburbanization in the North and West, 1940-1960
Chapter 6- "The House I Live In": Race, Class, and Suburban Dreams in the Postwar Period
Chapter 7- Separate Suburbanization in the South, 1940-1960
Chapter 8- Something Old, Something New: Suburbanization in the Civil Rights Era, 1960-1980
Chapter 9- The Next Great Migration: African American Suburbanization in the 1980s and 1990s
Notes
Index
Anthony J. Adam | Library Journal
"Numerous authors have detailed the phenomenon of black suburbanization in the 20th century surrounding specific U.S. cities, but Wiese is one of the few to consider the overall trend, particularly comparing migration in the North and the South. Wiese argues that instead of being forced from the cities, blacks moved into the suburbs by choice in order to build their own communities. His discussion of Southern suburbanization is especially interesting, partly because earlier studies have focused on Northern cities and partly because Wiese sees suburbanization as an extension of the Civil Rights Movement’s impetus toward black empowerment.... Wiese does a good job of covering his topic from both black and white perspectives. A useful addition to the literature of black suburbanization."
Amanda Seligman | Journal of Planning History
"A work of exceptionally broad research, Places of Their Own does much more than simply document the presence of African Americans in suburbs. It also illustrates how black suburbanization changed over the course of the twentieth century."
Nicholas Dagan Bloom | Journal of American History
“Places of Their Own is a necessary corrective to underclass stereotypes and the well-meaning academic obsession with black slums—the black middle and upper classes are rarely portrayed with so much depth or sensitivity. Wiese, by organizing his narrative around the impact of racial discrimination on urban form, may consciously follow in the footsteps of scholars such as Thomas Sugrue, Kenneth Jackson, and Arnold Hirsch, but the negativism that dominates the work of those scholars is tempered by the success stories of many of Wiese’s black suburban subjects and communities. Wiese’s approach produces a more balanced, if still troubling, account of racial change in the American metropolis.”
Alfrod A. Young, Jr | Ethnic and Racial Studies
“Wiese’s mission is to explain the ways by which African Americans discovered and pursued places for themselves in suburban America. Among other objectives, he aims to demonstrate that the African American commitment to suburbs living is no mere late-twentieth-century development, but extends back to the early decades of the century. . . . [Wiese’s] work should serve as the stimulus of sociologically-grounded comparative historical investigations of African American suburbanization. . . . Places of Their Own will become a valued and pioneering contribution to the sociological project of analyses of African American residential transformation.”
Eugene P. Moehring | Journal of American Ethnic History
"Wiese has provided an insightful reference work on black suburbanization that will influence the field and encourage new research. His informative maps, tables, and photographs further reinforce what is now the best scholarly treatment of an important subject."
Jack S. Blocker, Jr. | Left History
"This is an important book, as Wiese expertly deploys the concepts of race, class, and gender to demonstrate both the similarities and the differences between European-American and African American suburban experiences. . . . Historians of race relations and the civil rights movement, as well as urban and suburban historians, will find here much to spark debate and to stimulate further research. . . . But no matter how these issues are resolved, Places of Their Own will force us to reconsider the nature and meaning of twentieth-century American suburbanization.—Jack S. Blocker Jr., Left History
Popular Culture Assoc./American Culture Assoc.: John G. Cawelti Book Award
Won
Urban History Association: Kenneth Jackson Award
Won
ASA Community and Urban Sociology Section: Robert E. Park Award
Honorable Mention
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