Columbian College of Arts and Sciences - The George Washington ...

Living as Equals: How Three White Communities
Struggled to Make Interracial Connections During the
Civil Rights Era
by Phyllis Palmer
Vanderbilt University Press, 2008
When I began the thinking and
research that produced Living as
Equals, I simply wanted to find
interracial connections that I knew
from my own life existed during the
Civil Rights era, but were not part
of the standard history. Learning
about a few organized efforts to
cross the color line as legal and
social barriers came down led to a
more specific question: How did
White Americans who were not
resistant to social change respond
to the myriad possibilities opened
by the Civil Rights movement?
This book tells three stories of intentional efforts to
transform the old paradigms of racial segregation and White
dominance into new discourses of mutual respect and care. The
National Conference of Christians and Jews ran summer camps in
New York and Los Angeles where young people broke taboos
about social segregation and came to believe, much to the dismay
of many parents, that interracial dating and marriage were fine
and fun. In Washington, DC, the group Neighbors, Inc. led a
battle to end the racial designation of “Colored” in real estate ads.
They also joined coalitions to open housing in Virginia, Maryland,
and DC, and to protect the interracial neighborhoods of Takoma
and Shepherd Park. These White and Black middle-class families
constructed a picture of tolerant, multi-racial cosmopolitanism to
counter the predominant 1950s allure of White-only suburban
family life. And in San Antonio, some Northside Anglos, who
organized in churches and unions with help from Saul Alinsky’s
Industrial Areas Foundation, joined a political coalition with
Westside Mexican Americans to claim a voice in city governance
for people other than Anglo businessmen. I hope Living as Equals
encourages contemporary Americans to continue reaching across
the divisions that perpetuate residential segregation, de facto school
segregation, and the ongoing equation of White with American. ■
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continued from p. 13
Faculty News
Urban Studies. The highlight of the program was a lecture by
Camilo José Vergara, entitled “Harlem: The Unmaking of a
Ghetto.” Lastly, he gave a talk on “The Significance of
African-American History” to senior citizens at Saint Mary's
Court's Senior Lunch Program. In sum, Osman completed an
exciting year of scholarship, as well as teaching at GW, for
which he designed three new courses, including an
undergraduate version of his “Cityscapes” course and two new
research seminars.
Elaine Peña had a productive year at GW teaching courses on
performance and culture in the Americas. She also gave guest
lectures at Yale University, Georgetown University, and
Northwestern University. She presented her research at the
National University of Colombia-Bogotá and at Oxford
University. Elaine submitted her manuscript, Performing Piety:
Building, Walking, and Conquering in Central México and the Midwest
to the University of California Press (forthcoming). She also
published an article in American Quarterly entitled “Beyond
México: Guadalupan Sacred Space Production and
Mobilization in a Chicago Suburb” 60.3 (2008). In addition to
her position at GW, Elaine is serving as a consultant for the
Smithsonian National Museum of American History.
John Vlach reports that several of the projects he described in
last year’s newsletter continue to roll on happily. The
exhibition and book that examine the history and practice of
traditional basketry by African-American women in South
Carolina is making its way from Charleston to New York,
where it will inaugurate the new Museum for African Art.
(There is considerable excitement brewing along Central Park
East in the anticipation of this addition to an already
distinguished list of museums in the Big Apple.) The book that
accompanies the show, “Grass Roots: The African Origins of
an American Art,” has already garnered many compliments.
Looking ahead, John’s work on stoneware pottery made by
enslaved blacks in the US is in the planning stage. John joined
all the “usual suspects” at a gathering this past February in
Edgefield County, SC. At the end of the three-day caucus it
was decreed that all of those present would contribute in some
fashion to a wide multi-disciplinary effort to tell the story of
how that county (previously best known as the birth place of
Strom Thurmond) became the site of extraordinary ceramic
forms. For decades the scope of such a study was too daunting
for one scholar or one discipline to fathom but now it appears
that various scholars are ready to form a happy coalition
connecting archaeologists, geographers, historians,
genealogists, potters, folklorists, and others. John quips, “It
might be too much to hope for, but just maybe, in the future
old Strom may no longer get top billing.” ■
This issue of the GWU American Studies Department annual newsletter
was edited by Maureen Kentoff, Executive Assistant, amst@gwu.edu
American Studies 2008-09 16