Liberty Road: Black Middle-Class Suburbs and the Battle Between Civil Rights and Neoliberalism

by Gregory Smithsimon

Overview

A unique insight into desegregation in the suburbs and how racial inequality persists

Half of Black Americans who live in the one hundred largest metropolitan areas are now living in suburbs, not cities. In Liberty Road, Gregory Smithsimon shows us how this happened, and why it matters, unearthing the hidden role that suburbs played in establishing the Black middle-class.

Focusing on Liberty Road, a Black middle-class suburb of Baltimore, Smithsimon tells the remarkable story of how residents broke the color barrier, against all odds, in the face of racial discrimination, tensions with suburban whites and urban Blacks, and economic crises like the mortgage meltdown of 2008. Drawing on interviews, census data, and archival research he shows us the unique strategies that suburban Black residents in Liberty Road employed, creating a blueprint for other Black middle-class suburbs.

Smithsimon re-orients our perspective on race relations in American life to consider the lived experiences and lessons of those who broke the color barrier in unexpected places. Liberty Road shows us that if we want to understand Black America in the twenty-first century, we must look not just to our cities, but to our suburbs as well.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781479845118
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	04/12/2022
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Gregory Smithsimon is Professor of Sociology at Brooklyn College and Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is the author of September 12: Community and Neighborhood Recovery at Ground Zero, The Beach Beneath the Streets: Contesting New York City's Public Spaces, and Cause:…And How It Doesn’t Always Equal Effect.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Arriving on Liberty Road 1

1 Beyond Blockbusting: How Racial Transition Works 37

2 Building a Black Community: Activists Bring Racial Transition to the Suburbs 79

3 Desegregation: Resident Activists Craft a New Story in the Suburbs 117

4 Growth: How Suburban Space Reshapes Black Community Issues and Politics 138

5 Barriers: The Right to the City and Changing Suburban Space 163

6 Foreclosure: Punctuated Equilibrium 192

7 Conservative Politics: Left and Right or Black and White? 220

Conclusion: The Future of the Black Middle Class and Suburbia 247

Acknowledgments 259

Notes 261

Index 287

About the Author 303

Editorial Reviews

"This deeply-researched and engrossing text invites us to think of the relationship between race, place, and neoliberalism in innovative ways, namely through an examination of African-American suburbanites. In doing so, Smithsimon provides a crucial analysis of the persistent tensions between racial progress and retrenchment."

Jean Beaman

"Liberty Road uncovers and exposes the social, political, cultural, and economic contradictions of middle-class African-American suburban life. Gregory Smithsimon explores the ways social conflicts and inequalities play out and through physical places and emphasizes the roles that African-American residents play in understanding and addressing suburban community issues.

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Karyn R. Lacy

"African American suburbs are different from African American urban communities and middle-class white communities, often in counterintuitive ways. Liberty Road explains the history, present, and future significance of these differences."

Ethnic and Racial Studies

"Gregory Smithsimon chronicles the experiences of middle-class blacks who were the first residents to integrate into Liberty Road, a predominantly white Baltimore suburb. He explores their side of the story, showing us how this racial project unfolded in political ways, constraining black progress under the guise of racial inclusivity.

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Michael Ian Borer

"By bringing African American agency to the forefront of the discussion, Greg Smithsimon successfully disentangles the complex web of causes related to the growth of African American suburban communities…Liberty Road is informative and articulate, written in language accessible to academics and nonacademics…Practitioners and lay people will find the book useful in providing an understanding of Black suburbs and the role that they continue to play in a highly segregated residential landscape."

Journal of Urban Affairs

"A new book examines how Baltimore’s African American middle class overcame color barriers and racial tensions along the Liberty Road corridor over the past five decades as they established themselves in classic suburban neighborhoods. Author Gregory Smithsimon draws upon interviews, archives and census data to show how this area of Baltimore County is now home to approximately 82,000 Black people ... It’s clear that Smithsimon rang the right doorbells and listened attentively to some of the people who experienced the times."

The Baltimore Sun

"Liberty Road locates Black suburbs as an essential and a mitigating force in the American dream. We overlook these spaces in our understanding of cities and our history at our own peril. This is an important and engaging book for urban sociology and history, made so by the author’s skillful weaving of personal stories with archival research to ground the analysis in specific people and places."

The Journal of Southern History