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Macro Argument
(Historical Forces)
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Micro Arguments (Human
Choices)
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1865-1900
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1865-1900
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Industrial
Revolution
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The Legacy of
Two Centuries of Slavery
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Huge demand for raw cotton In English
Factories
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Impact on African-American Family
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Huge demand for a pool of cheap, unskilled
labor in the cotton fields of the South
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Deliberate Denial of Education to
African-American Children
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Growing Demand for Factory Labor in the
Urban North: Railroads, Manufacturing, Meat Packing
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Self-Definition via Racist Oppression
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Upon Liberation: Brief Period of Political
Rights during Reconstruction, but No Forty Acres and a Mule
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Impact of Railroads on Economy
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Injustice of
Sharecropping and Segregation
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Heterogeneous Urban Neighborhoods develop in
northern walking cities (including some blacks)
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Swindling of tenant farmers results in
forced labor
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Upward Mobility of European Immigrants (Irish,
Italian, Greek, German, Scandinavian, Jewish) is
achieved but the process of assimilation and then upward progress to middle
class usually takes at least a full generation.
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Jim Crow: Segregation by Racist Policies
that deny political rights and legal rights
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Jim Crow: Policies enforced by violence
against blacks (Lynching)
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Jim Crow Schools deny black students the
same educational opportunities as whites receive in public schools
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1900-1950
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1900-1950
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World War I Economic Boom (US supplies
weapons, manufactured goods, and canned food to the Allied Armies.)
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The Mechanization of the Cotton Picker
eliminates the demand for a huge pool of unskilled labor
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The Great Migration of African Americans
from the South to the Cities of the North (5 million+ over forty years)
enables blacks to earn salaries beyond a sharecropper’s dreams
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Vertical Integration of Urban Walking Cities
combines black workers with emerging black middle class teachers, business people,
and other professionals.
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Segregated Urban Housing drives prices up
and contributes to the deterioration of housing stock in black urban
neighborhoods. Black students in sub-par underfunded schools.
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Racist Union rules deny blacks union rights
and relegates black workers to the bottom rung of the factory ladder
(dangerous and unhealthy jobs). Use of black workers as strikebreakers
exacerbates racism among working class whites.
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African American Cultural Hey-Day: jazz,
blues, birth of rock and roll, Black businesses, churches and volunteer
organizations flourish in inner cities.
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The Great Depression destroys businesses,
wipes out savings, causes mass unemployment (25% of work force), and hard
times persist throughout the 1930’s (until the onset of WWII.) Black
unemployment reaches high of 50%.
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FDR New Deal legislation offers jobs, social
security, unemployment compensation, and housing loans to whites, but these
services are not offered to agricultural workers and domestics (i.e. most
black workers) (FHA redlining, Zoning black neighborhoods as ‘industrial’.)
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1950-1970
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1950-1970
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post-WWII Manufacturing Boom due to
destruction of European and Japanese factories and infrastructure
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Great Migration of Blacks to the North
reaches its height
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Governments construct interstate highways
which open rural areas to development (Birth of the Suburbs and
commencement of White Flight to the Suburbs)
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Huge Demand for Labor leads to integration
of blacks into unions and the extension of generous union benefits to
workers (including blacks)
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Black Workers start entering the Middle
Class: home ownership, better neighborhood services, better schools in
segregated neighborhoods
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Overpopulated Black neighborhoods are
bursting at the seams. Redlining of blacks continues to deny government
loans to blacks
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“Urban Renewal” projects target black neighborhoods
for demolition to make way for highways and urban development projects
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Governments construct huge, high rise public
housing projects for the blacks displaced by Urban Renewal
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1948 Supreme Court Decision: Shelley vs.
Kramer makes housing discrimination illegal and blacks begin to apply for
homes in the suburbs.
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Unethical Real Estate Agents use Block
busting tactics to profit from white flight and subdivide suburban housing
for black families leading to deterioration of housing stock
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Relation of Civil Rights Movement to
thriving manufacturing economy?
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Cold War leads America into Korea and then
the Vietnam War
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American Troops wind up in quagmire in
guerilla war in Vietnam, new asymmetrical warfare stymies vast US firepower
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Civil Rights Movement achieves ‘life and
liberty’ for blacks and outlaws segregation
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War on Poverty offers urban blacks federal
money to start neighborhood programs: Head Start, Community Action
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Urban Riots/ Vietnam Demonstrations/ Black
Power Movement lead to collapse of Liberal Consensus in Washington
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Nixon expands welfare to pay off urban
blacks and quell riot ideology.
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1970-2015
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1970-2015
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Technological Advances in Shipping and
Highway construction combined with industrial recovery in Japan and Europe
begin period of Economic Globalization
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Big Labor in America begins decline. Rise of
Service Economy
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Manufacturing Jobs leave the Urban North and
head to factories overseas where workers are paid 1/10th-1/20th
US wage, unions are illegal, and environmental and
safety regulations do not exist.
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Although Black politicians finally achieve
power in cities, they do not control the massive patronage jobs and funds
that had been available to earlier generations of rising immigrants
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Rise of Drug Trade and Gangs, Deterioration
of schools and infrastructure, cut backs on social services.
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Unemployment skyrockets in urban
neighborhoods
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Black Middle Class flight to suburbs leaves
concentrated poverty in inner city.
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Supreme Court rules in 1972 (San Antonio v.
Rodriguez) that school financing via property taxes is legal and in busing
of black students to suburbs is illegal, resulting in de facto re-segregation and under financing of urban schools.
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Blacks cannot compete for information
economy jobs without higher education and are thus relegated to low level
service economy jobs (domestics, clerks, retail, janitors, cashiers) which
do not have the generous benefits offered earlier generations of immigrants
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Concentrated Poverty in High Rise Projects
that quickly degenerate into hell holes
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