Advanced Search

A journal about real and imagined spaces and places of the US South and their global connections

White Flight: The Strategies, Ideology, and Legacy of Segregationists in Atlanta

Kevin Kruse
Presentation

[author_affiliation]

published March 24, 2010

Overview

On November 3, 2005, Dr. Kevin Kruse of Princeton University’s History Department spoke at Emory University about several themes developed in his book White Flight (2005), a study of segregationists’ strategies and ideologies in Atlanta. White Flight argues that the movement of whites out of southern cities from the 1940s through the 1970s was part of a broader political withdrawal prompted by the civil rights movement, and that the roots of modern southern conservatism can be found in this confrontation.

Video

About the Presenter

Kevin Kruse is a scholar of the political, social, and urban/suburban history of twentieth century America with particular interest in the making of modern conservatism. Focused on conflicts over race, rights, and religion, he also studies the postwar South and modern suburbia. Raised in Nashville, Tennessee, he attended the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, graduating in 1994. He earned a PhD in history at Cornell University in 2000 and joined the Princeton History Department the same year. His first book, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism (2005), argues that the movement of whites out of southern cities from the 1940s through the 1970s was part of a broader political withdrawal prompted by the civil rights movement, and that the roots of modern southern conservatism can be found in this confrontation. He is coeditor with Thomas Sugrue of The New Suburban History (2005), an innovative collection looking at the history of postwar suburbia in America. Currently, Professor Kruse is working on a new book on the origins of the Religious Right in American politics, from the 1950s through the 1980s.

Recommended Resources

Maps

Overview Map of Atlanta
Overview Map of Atlanta. Kevin Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005.

Black Population: Atlanta and Vicinity, 1940
Black Population: Atlanta and Vicinity, 1940 Kevin Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005.

Black Population: Atlanta and Vicinity, 1950 Kevin Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005.

Black Population: Atlanta and Vicinity, 1960
Black Population: Atlanta and Vicinity, 1960 Kevin Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005.

Black Population: Atlanta and Vicinity, 1970 Kevin Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005.

Print

Brattain, Michelle. The Politics of Whiteness: Race, Workers, and Culture in the Modern South. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001.

Dudziak Mary L. Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002.

Keating, Larry. Atlanta: Race, Class and Urban Expansion. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001.

Kruse, Kevin. White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005.

McGirr, Lisa. Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002.

Pomerantz, Gary M. Where Peachtre Meets Sweet Auburn. New York: Scribner, 1996.

Stone, Clarence N. Regime Politics: Governing Atlanta, 1946-1988. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1989.

Similar Publications

Sections