Introduction: contesting democracy: working-class and growth politics in the city; 1. Milwaukee: a mid-twentieth-century working-class city; 2. New Deal legacies and wartime urgencies: housing politics, private enterprise, and public authority; 3. Wartime gambling, working-class leisure, and urban reform: 'why do our boys have to fight if we can't play bingo?'; 4. A militant CIO vision for city democracy: power, security, and egalitarianism; 5. Debt, growth, and democracy in the early postwar city; 6. Housing the postwar city: crowding, race, and policy; 7. Public housing, redevelopment, and urban citizenship: the 1951 referendum fight; Epilogue: revising postwar democracy: a city with class.
Focusing on mid-century Milwaukee, Eric Fure-Slocum charts the remaking of political culture in the industrial city of the 1940s.
Eric Fure-Slocum teaches History and American Studies at St Olaf College. His research and writing focuses on twentieth-century US urban and working-class history, with an interest in the shaping of American political culture and the political economy.
'Eric Fure-Slocum takes an in-depth look at the politics and public
life of 1940s Milwaukee. He resurrects the history of
long-forgotten struggles over public entertainment, housing
shortages, and downtown modernization, and uses them to illustrate
two very different visions of postwar urban development: what he
calls 'working-class' versus 'growth' politics. Related analyses
should be written for many US cities, but Milwaukee is a
particularly good site for such study. The city had a powerful and
vibrant socialist governing tradition dating from 1910, as well as
an emerging energetic business coalition committed to reshaping
what it saw as an outmoded, inefficient city. Fure-Slocum has us
rethink the periodization of twentieth-century urban history as he
seamlessly takes us from the depression era to wartime to
reconversion, showing how Milwaukeeans reshaped their city and
their lives.' Margo Anderson, University of Wisconsin,
Milwaukee
"In this gracefully written, deeply researched, and cleverly
illustrated book, Eric Fure-Slocum breaks the traditional division
between 'wartime' and 'postwar', and challenges the easy assumption
that 'growth politics' and urban renewal were necessarily benign
and inevitable. What counted as modern and outmoded were code words
for other interests often dimly understood. Underneath the daily
political headlines of bond issues and elections, Americans were
defining who belonged and who didn't deserve respect. Fure-Slocum
challenges the habits of mind that treat African Americans and
women of all ethnic groups as marginal. In his vision of the city,
race and gender politics are present from the outset, linked
sharply with the politics of class, and enacted by individuals
whose histories he studies and whose alliances he analyzes.' Linda
K. Kerber, University of Iowa, and author of No Constitutional
Right to Be Ladies: Women and the Obligations of Citizenship
'Fure-Slocum offers a detailed case study of the post-World War II
resurgence of conservativism in the US. This solidly researched
study focuses on the effective rejection of liberal New Deal
policies regarding race, organized labour, and working-class
politics … especially useful for readers interested in local,
political, or urban history.' Choice
'Fure-Slocum has provided an extremely fine-grained account of
postwar Milwaukee politics.' Bruce Fetter, Journal of
Interdisciplinary History
'This is an insightful, carefully crafted, and deeply researched
study.' Roger D. Simon, The Journal of American History
'Fure-Slocum's fine book is part of a growing literature on
mid-century urbanism and the origins of the Rust Belt … The book's
greatest strength lies in its perspective: it does not look to
explain the urban crises of the 1960s or the political and
environmental costs of suburbanization, yet it encourages us to
rethink how the policies and practices of public housing, racial
segregation, industrial mobility, and urban sprawl emerged not from
an inevitable and shared sense of urban decline.' Paul O'Hara, The
American Historical Review
'In this detailed case study of a lone city during a single decade,
the author manages to tackle a number of important issues to
students of US urban life in the late twentieth and early
twenty-first centuries. His analysis of how Milwaukee's political
culture changed significantly considers the important roles played
by African Americans, women, trade unions, and other groups
striving for economic security in a hazardous time of
deindustrialization.' Robert A. Beauregard, The Michigan Historical
Review
'Fure-Slocum does a wonderful job of portraying the resistance
mounted by organized labor and working-class communities and the
persistence of liberal reformers who viewed the city's prosperity
as hinging on the growth of the downtown.' Joe William Trotter, Jr,
Social History
'In this detailed case study of a lone city during a single decade,
the author manages to tackle a number of important issues to
students of US urban life in the late twentieth and early
twenty-first centuries. His analysis of how Milwaukee's political
culture changed significantly considers the important roles played
by African Americans, women, trade unions, and other groups
striving for economic security in a hazardous time of
deindustrialization.' Roger Biles, The Michigan Historical Review
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