Description
Book SynopsisElizabeth Herbin-Triant investigates early-twentieth-century campaigns for residential segregation laws in North Carolina to show how the version of white supremacy supported by middle-class white people differed from that supported by the elites. Class divides halted Jim Crow from mandating separate neighborhoods for black and white southerners.
Trade ReviewHerbin-Triant tackles a surprisingly neglected aspect of the Jim Crow era—efforts to impose residential segregation in urban and rural areas. Insightfully integrating considerations of race and class and probing how they intersected with the defense of property rights, she sheds new light on attempts to legally separate blacks and whites. An important contribution to southern and American history. -- Eric Foner, Columbia University
Paying careful attention to social and legal processes in urban and rural contexts,
Threatening Property refutes the often-unexamined notion that the rise of de jure segregation unified whites and subordinated blacks. In this pathbreaking study, Herbin-Triant reveals a crucial avenue of research for scholars and points the way forward. -- Kenneth Mack, author of
Representing the Race: The Creation of the Civil Rights LawyerSkillfully combining local and transnational approaches,
Threatening Property reveals the class struggle underlying campaigns for residential segregation in the South, shattering the myth of a unity of interests among white southerners. Following in the tradition of C. Vann Woodward, Elizabeth Herbin-Triant offers a nuanced and sophisticated analysis of Jim Crow’s contested career. -- Adrienne Monteith Petty, author of
Standing Their Ground: Small Farmers in North Carolina Since the Civil WarWhen Clarence Poe of the
Progressive Farmer launched his 1913 campaign to segregate the rural south, it divided opinion in surprising ways. In her nuanced, well-supported, and crisply written social history, Elizabeth Herbin-Triant explores the intersection of race, class, and ideological fault lines in this story of strange bedfellows. -- Mark Schultz, author of
The Rural Face of White Supremacy: Beyond Jim CrowHerbin-Triant provides significant insight into the broader national landscape during the Jim Crow era . . . Recommended. * Choice *
This book is a must read for anyone interested in civil rights, urban development, or social policy in the South. It introduces ideas and areas that researchers can mine in future projects, and presents a model for studying public and private spaces in other states. * North Carolina Historical Review *
This highly readable book should be of interest to many disciplines (urban sociology, geography, history, city planning) and to many lay readers as well. * Journal of Urban Affairs *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction
1. Middling Whites in Postbellum North Carolina
2. Fusion, Democrats, and the Scarecrow of Race
3. Inspirations for Residential Segregation
4. Separating Residences in the Camel City
5. Jim Crow for the Countryside
Conclusion: Planning for Residential Segregation After
BuchananNotes
Bibliography
Index
