The Silent Majority : : Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South / / Matthew D. Lassiter.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Princeton University Press eBook-Package Backlist 2000-2013
• VerfasserIn: Lassiter, Matthew D.,
• Place / Publishing House: Princeton, NJ : : Princeton University Press, , [2013]; ©2007
• Year of Publication: 2013
• Language: English
• Series: Politics and Society in Modern America ; 94
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (416 p.) :; 23 halftones. 1 line illus. 4 tables. 8 maps.

Suburban sprawl transformed the political culture of the American South as much as the civil rights movement did during the second half of the twentieth century. The Silent Majority provides the first regionwide account of the suburbanization of the South from the perspective of corporate leaders, political activists, and especially of the ordinary families who lived in booming Sunbelt metropolises such as Atlanta, Charlotte, and Richmond. Matthew Lassiter examines crucial battles over racial integration, court-ordered busing, and housing segregation to explain how the South moved from the era of Jim Crow fully into the mainstream of national currents. During the 1960s and 1970s, the grassroots mobilization of the suburban homeowners and school parents who embraced Richard Nixon's label of the Silent Majority reshaped southern and national politics and helped to set in motion the center-right shift that has dominated the United States ever since. The Silent Majority traces the emergence of a "color-blind" ideology in the white middle-class suburbs that defended residential segregation and neighborhood schools as the natural outcomes of market forces and individual meritocracy rather than the unconstitutional products of discriminatory public policies. Connecting local and national stories, and reintegrating southern and American history, The Silent Majority is critical reading for those interested in urban and suburban studies, political and social history, the civil rights movement, public policy, and the intersection of race and class in modern America.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- List of Tables -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- Introduction -- Part I. The Triumph of Moderation -- Chapter 1. The Divided South -- Chapter 2. HOPE in the New South -- Chapter 3. The Open-Schools Movement -- Chapter 4. The Strange Career of Atlanta Exceptionalism -- Part II. The Revolt of the Center -- Chapter 5. The "Charlotte Way" -- Chapter 6. Suburban Populism -- Chapter 7. Neighborhood Politics -- Chapter 8. Class Fairness and Racial Stability -- Part III. Suburban Strategies -- Chapter 9. The Suburbanization of Southern Politics -- Chapter 10. The Failure of the Southern Strategy -- Chapter 11. Metropolitan Divergence -- Chapter 12. Regional Convergence -- Epilogue -- Notes -- Index