On Melbenan Drive just west of Atlanta, sunlight falls onto a long row
of well-kept lawns. Two dozen homes line the street; behind them wooden
decks and living-room windows open onto vast woodland properties.
Residents returning from their jobs steer SUVs into long driveways and
emerge from their automobiles. They walk to the front doors of their
houses past sculptured bushes and flowers in bloom.
For most people, this cozy image of suburbia does not immediately evoke
images of African Americans. But as this pioneering work demonstrates,
the suburbs have provided a home to black residents in increasing
numbers for the past hundred years--in the last two decades alone, the
numbers have nearly doubled to just under twelve million. Places of
Their Own begins a hundred years ago, painting an austere portrait of
the conditions that early black residents found in isolated, poor
suburbs. Andrew Wiese insists, however, that they moved there by choice,
withstanding racism and poverty through efforts to shape the landscape
to their own needs. Turning then to the 1950s, Wiese illuminates key
differences between black suburbanization in the North and South. He
considers how African Americans in the South bargained for separate
areas where they could develop their own neighborhoods, while many of
their northern counterparts transgressed racial boundaries, settling in
historically white communities. Ultimately, Wiese explores how the civil
rights movement emboldened black families to purchase homes in the
suburbs with increased vigor, and how the passage of civil rights
legislation helped pave the way for today's black middle class.
Tracing the precise contours of black migration to the suburbs over the
course of the whole last century and across the entire United States,
Places of Their Own will be a foundational book for anyone interested
in the African American experience or the role of race and class in the
making of America's suburbs.
Winner of the 2005 John G. Cawelti Book Award from the American
Culture
Association.
Winner of the 2005 Award for Best Book in North American Urban
History from the Urban History Association.
