Sorting Out the New South City: Race, Class, and Urban Development in Charlotte, 1875-1975

Hanchett, Tom

ISBN 10: 0807846775 / ISBN 13: 9780807846773

Published by The University of North Carolina Press, 1998

Item in very good condition! Textbooks may not include supplemental items i.e. CDs, access codes etc. Seller Inventory # 00095502530

Synopsis:

One of the largest and fastest-growing cities in the South, Charlotte, North Carolina, came of age in the New South decades of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, transforming itself from a rural courthouse village to the trading and financial hub of America's premier textile manufacturing region. In this book, Thomas Hanchett traces the city's spatial evolution over the course of a century, exploring the interplay of national trends and local forces that shaped Charlotte, and, by extension, other New South urban centers.

Hanchett argues that racial and economic segregation are not age-old givens, but products of a decades-long process. Well after the Civil War, Charlotte's whites and blacks, workers and business owners, all lived intermingled in a "salt-and-pepper" pattern. The rise of large manufacturing enterprises in the 1880s and 1890s brought social and political upheaval, however, and the city began to sort out into a "checkerboard" of distinct neighborhoods segregated by both race and class. When urban renewal and other federal funds became available in the mid- twentieth century, local leaders used the money to complete the sorting out process, creating a "sector" pattern in which wealthy whites increasingly lived on one side of town and blacks on the other.

About the Author: Thomas W. Hanchett taught urban history and history preservation at Youngstown State University and Cornell University before becoming the staff historian at the Levine Museum of the New South in Charlotte.

Bibliographic Details

Title: Sorting Out the New South City: Race, Class,...
Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
Publication Date: 1998
Binding: Soft cover
Condition: Very Good