A historian whose work challenges the prevailing notion that urban decline began with the racial turmoil of the 1960s will speak at the University of Rochester this month.
Thomas J. Sugrue will discuss his most recent research on racial equality in a talk titled "Sweet Land of Liberty: The Unfinished Struggle for Racial Equality in the North" at 8 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 23, in the Welles-Brown Room in Rush Rhees Library on the University's River Campus.
In his award-winning book The Origins of the Urban Crisis (1996), Sugrue used the city of Detroit as a case study to show how urban decline could be traced back to the 1940s and 1950s. Examining discrimination in the workplace and in housing after World War II, he noted how changes in the urban landscape were already underway before the 1960s and how these changes planted the roots for today's urban poverty.
The Origins of the Urban Crisis won numerous awards, including the Bancroft Prize in American History, the Philip Taft Prize in Labor History, the President's Book Award of the Social Science History Association, and the Urban History Association Award for Best Book in North American Urban History.
Sugrue is the Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Professor of History and Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, where he teaches courses in American history, American civilization, and sociology. He has published numerous articles on modern American culture and politics, affirmative action, 20th century conservatism and liberalism, race, urban economic development, and poverty and public policy.
Sugrue's talk is part of the Department of History's Verne Moore Lecture series and also serves as the keynote address for a conference on civil rights history sponsored by the Frederick Douglass Institute for African and African-American Studies. For more information on Sugrue's lecture, contact the Department of History at (585) 275-2052.