Crabgrass-Roots Politics: Race, Rights, and the Reaction against Liberalism in the Urban North, 1940-1964 Author(s): Thomas J. Sugrue Reviewed work(s): Source: The Journal of American History, Vol. 82, No. 2 (Sep., 1995), pp. 551-578 Published by: Organization of American Historians Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2082186 . Accessed: 27/09/2012 13:32 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Organization of American Historians is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of American History. http://www.jstor.org Crabgrass-RootsPolitcs: Race, Rights, and the Reactionagainst Liberalism in the UrbanNorth, 1940-1964 ThomasJ. Sugrue The dominantnarratives of twentieth-centuryUnited States history depict the rise of a triumphantliberal state, shaped by the hopefulmarriage of governmentand expertiseand validated by a "liberalconsensus" of workers, corporations, southerners and northerners,whites and Blacks,Catholics and Jews. Conservative critics of the statehave remained on thefringes of historiography,as Alan Brinkleyhas recently argued,a "largelyneglected part of the storyof twentieth-centuryAmerica." One of the unexaminedironies of recentAmerican history is thatthe mostinfluential criticsof theliberal state came neitherfrom the ranks of theRepublicans nor from suchradical rightist organizations as theLiberty League, the Black Legion, and the JohnBirch Society, nor fromthe ranksof Communistsand socialists.The most vocal- and ultimatelythe farthest-reachingchallenge to liberalism- came from withinthe New Deal coalitionitself. Southern whites, whether die-hard Democrats ordisaffected Dixiecrats, constrained New Deal liberalismfrom its inception. Corpo- rateleaders and businessunionists limited the possibilitiesfor social democratic reformin the workplace.Their stories are well known.But crucialto the fateof liberalismand antiliberalismin themid-twentieth-century United States were north- ern,urban whites. They were the backbone of the New Deal coalition;their political viewsand theirvotes limited the possibilities of liberal reform in themid-twentieth centuryand constrainedthe leading liberal social movement, the extension of civil rightsand libertiesto AfricanAmericans. 1 ThomasJ. Sugrueis assistantprofessor ofhistory at theUniversity ofPennsylvania. Earlier versions of this paper werepresented to theAmerican Political Science Association annual meeting (1992); the "Toward a Historyof the1960s" conference, Madison, Wisconsin (1993); the American Historical Association annual meeting (1994); asthe Charles Colver Lecture in Urban Studies at Brown University (1994); and to the German Historical Institute, Washington,D.C. (1994).For comments, criticism, support, and collegial debate, thanks to Dana Barron,Jo AnnArgersinger, Kevin Boyle, Alan Brinkley, Paul Buhle, Lizabeth Cohen, Gerald Gamm, Daniel Gitterman, JamesGrossman, Arnold R. Hirsch,Alison Isenberg, Michael Katz, Michael Kazin, Philip Klinkner, Nelson Lichtenstein,James Morone, Bruce Nelson, Alice O'Connor, Adolph Reed, Fred Siegel, and Marshall Stevenson. Fundsfor research were provided by the Social Science Research Council Committee for Research on theUrban Underclass,through support from the Rockefeller Foundation; the Bordin-Gilette Research Travel Grant, Bentley Library,University ofMichigan; the University ofPennsylvania Research Foundation; and the Kaiser Family Founda- tionResearch Grant from the Walter P. ReutherLibrary. ' Alan Brinkley,"The Problemof American Conservatism," American HistoricalReview, 99 (April1994), 410. See alsothe important review essay, Michael Kazin, "The Grass-RootsRight: New Historiesof U. S. Conservatismin theTwentieth Century," ibid., 97 (Feb. 1992), 136-55. On southernwhites and the roleof southernDemocrats The Journalof AmericanHistory September1995 551 552 TheJournal of American History September1995 The New Deal may have been, as LizabethCohen and othershave argued,a unifyingmoment in Americanpolitical history, at leastin theurban North. Indus- trialworkers discovered common political goals in theDemocratic party, built class solidaritythrough the Congressof IndustrialOrganizations (cio), and expressed theirgrievances through an inclusivelanguage of Americanism.Yet beneaththe seemingunity of the New Deal orderwere unresolved questions of racialidentity and racialpolitics. Eating away at the "liberalconsensus," just as it reachedits postwarapotheosis, was a newlyassertive working-class whiteness.2 As earlyas the 1940s,white politicians in theurban North began to identifythe hot-button issues thatmotivated urban working-class and middle-classwhite voters. In the crucible ofpostwar northern cities undergoing profound racial and economictransformation, theyfashioned a newpolitics that combined racial antipathy with a growingskepti- cismabout liberalism.The whiterebellion against the New Deal had its origins in the urbanpolitics of the 1940sand 1950s.The localpolitics of raceand housing in the aftermathof World War II fostereda grass-rootsrebellion against liberalism and seriouslylimited the social democratic and egalitarianpossibilities of theNew Deal order. PostwarDetroit The historyof politicsin the post-NewDeal era has been told primarilyat the nationallevel. The values,ideals, and socialmovements that formed the political worldof themid-twentieth century can be seenmost clearly, however, at the local level,where political and social history intersected in theday-to-day lives of ordinary Americans.An examinationof post-World War II Detroit,Michigan, offers insights into the travailsof liberalismat the grass-rootslevel. Dominatedby a blue-collar workforce, heavily unionized, and predominantlyCatholic, Detroit was a strong- hold of theDemocratic party, a bastionof supportfor New Deal liberalism.Detroit workers- both white and Black - benefitedtremendously from New Deal programs. By providingtemporary work during the GreatDepression, the WorksProgress in limitingNew Deal socialprograms, see James C. Cobb and MichaelNamorato, eds., TheNew Deal and the South (Jackson,1984). On the post-WorldWar II South,see Numan V. Bartley,From Thurmond to Wallace: PoliticalTendencies in Georgia,1948-1968 (Baltimore,1970); Jill Quadagno, "FromOld Age Assistanceto SupplementalSecurity Income: The PoliticalEconomy of Reliefin the South, 1935-1972,"in The Politicsof Social Policyin the UnitedStates, ed. MargaretWeir, Ann Shola Orloff,and Theda Skocpol(Princeton, 1988), 235-64; and BruceJ. Schulman,From Cotton Belt to Sunbelt:Federal Policy, Economic Development, and the Transformationofthe South,1938-1980 (New York,1991). On thelimits on reformin theworkplace, see Nelson Lichtenstein,"From Corporatism to CollectiveBargaining: Organized Labor and the Eclipseof Social Democracy in the PostwarEra," in TheRise and Fall of the New Deal Order,1930-1980, ed. SteveFraser and GaryGerstle (Princeton,1989), 122-52; and ElizabethA. Fones-Wolf,Selling Free Enterprise: The Business Assault on Labor and Liberalism,1945-60 (Urbana, 1994). 2 LizabethCohen, Makinga New Deal: IndustrialWorkers in Chicago,1919-1939 (New York,1990); Gary Gerstle,Working-Class Americanism: The Politics of Laborin a TextileCity, 1920-1960 (New York,1989); Gary Gerstle,"Working-Class Racism: Broaden the Focus,"International Labor and Working-ClassHistory, 44 (Fall 1993), 33-40; BruceNelson, "Class, Race, and Democracyin the CIm: The 'New' LaborHistory Meets the 'Wages of Whiteness,"'International Review of Social History(forthcoming); David Roediger,Towards the Abolition of Whiteness:Essays on Race, Politics,and WorkingClass History (London, 1994). Race,Rights, and the Reaction against Liberalism 553 Administrationcemented the loyaltyof the unemployedof all racesto the New Deal. The NationalLabor RelationsAct of 1935 facilitatedunionization, which broughttangible gains to Detroit'sblue-collar population. By the 1940sDetroit's heavilyunionized work force commanded high wages and generousbenefits. In addition,federal housing subsidies, under the aegis of the Home Owners'Loan Corporation,the Federal Housing Administration, and the Veterans Administration, protectedhomeowners from foreclosure and made home ownershippossible for muchof the city'sworking class. Detroit'svoters turned out in drovesfor Democratic presidential candidates in everyelection after 1932, most prominentlysupporting Franklin D. Roosevelt, whoseportrait graced working-class clubs, bars,and homesthroughout the city. Detroitersprovided the crucialmargin of votesin gubernatorialelections for the New Dealer FrankMurphy (later appointed to the UnitedStates Supreme Court by FDR) and forliberals such as G. Mennen"Soapy" Williams.Only once after 1932did Detroitersfail to rallybehind the Democratic candidate for governor. But justas supportfor the New Deal reachedits zenith at thestate and nationallevels, social and demographicchanges began to erode supportfor the liberalagenda in Detroit.3 The SecondGreat Migration of southern Blacks to the city set into motion political tremors.Detroit was a magnetfor African American migrants during and