Full Citation

Title: Good Neighbors for Fair Housing: Suburban Liberalism and Racial Inequality in Metropolitan Boston

Citation Type: Journal Article

Publication Year: 2013

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Abstract: In the late 1950s and early 1960s, a fair housing movement made up of white-collar professionalsand housewives rapidly emerged in the Route 128 suburbs outside of Boston. The Bostonnetwork, which eventually included thirty-five hundred members and thirty-seven chapters,became the largest and most active example of a national phenomenon. Tracing the evolutionof the fair housing movement complicates standard narratives of suburban politics, modernliberalism, and the civil rights movement. The movements combination of localized and legaltactics played a crucial role in creating the grassroots support and legal means to fight racialdiscrimination and came to shape state and federal housing policy. Yet its suburban-based andindividualist political outlook imposed serious constraints on the efforts to eradicate the rootcauses of residential inequality and solidified larger patterns of spatial inequality in Massachusettsand the nation.

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Authors: Geismer, Lily

Periodical (Full): Journal of Urban History

Issue: 3

Volume: 39

Pages: 454-477

Data Collections: IPUMS NHGIS

Topics: Housing and Segregation

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