History

White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism

The forgotten story of how southern white supremacy and resistance to desegregation helped give birth to the modern conservative movement

Paperback

Price:
$32.00/£28.00
ISBN:
Published:
Jul 29, 2007
2005
Pages:
352
Size:
6 x 9.25 in.
Illus:
12 halftones. 12 maps.
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During the civil rights era, Atlanta thought of itself as “The City Too Busy to Hate,” a rare place in the South where the races lived and thrived together. Over the course of the 1960s and 1970s, however, so many whites fled the city for the suburbs that Atlanta earned a new nickname: “The City Too Busy Moving to Hate.”

In this reappraisal of racial politics in modern America, Kevin Kruse explains the causes and consequences of “white flight” in Atlanta and elsewhere. Seeking to understand segregationists on their own terms, White Flight moves past simple stereotypes to explore the meaning of white resistance. In the end, Kruse finds that segregationist resistance, which failed to stop the civil rights movement, nevertheless managed to preserve the world of segregation and even perfect it in subtler and stronger forms.

Challenging the conventional wisdom that white flight meant nothing more than a literal movement of whites to the suburbs, this book argues that it represented a more important transformation in the political ideology of those involved. In a provocative revision of postwar American history, Kruse demonstrates that traditional elements of modern conservatism, such as hostility to the federal government and faith in free enterprise, underwent important transformations during the postwar struggle over segregation. Likewise, white resistance gave birth to several new conservative causes, like the tax revolt, tuition vouchers, and privatization of public services. Tracing the journey of southern conservatives from white supremacy to white suburbia, Kruse locates the origins of modern American politics.


Awards and Recognition

  • Co-Winner of the 2007 Best Book Award, Urban Politics Section of the American Political Science Association
  • Winner of the 2007 Francis B. Simkins Award, Southern Historical Association
  • Winner of the 2007 Malcolm Bell, Jr., and Muriel Barrow Bell Award for the Best Book in Georgia History, Georgia Historical Society