American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland (Politics and Society in Twentieth Century America) [Hardcover]

Robert O. Self (Author)

Book Description

Series: Politics and Society in Twentieth Century America | Publication Date: October 13, 2003

As the birthplace of the Black Panthers and a nationwide tax revolt, California embodied a crucial motif of the postwar United States: the rise of suburbs and the decline of cities, a process in which black and white histories inextricably joined. American Babylon tells this story through Oakland and its nearby suburbs, tracing both the history of civil rights and black power politics as well as the history of suburbanization and home-owner politics. Robert Self shows that racial inequities in both New Deal and Great Society liberalism precipitated local struggles over land, jobs, taxes, and race within postwar metropolitan development. Black power and the tax revolt evolved together, in tension.

American Babylon demonstrates that the history of civil rights and black liberation politics in California did not follow a southern model, but represented a long-term struggle for economic rights that began during the World War II years and continued through the rise of the Black Panthers in the late 1960s. This struggle yielded a wide-ranging and profound critique of postwar metropolitan development and its foundation of class and racial segregation. Self traces the roots of the 1978 tax revolt to the 1940s, when home owners, real estate brokers, and the federal government used racial segregation and industrial property taxes to forge a middle-class lifestyle centered on property ownership.

Using the East Bay as a starting point, Robert Self gives us a richly detailed, engaging narrative that uniquely integrates the most important racial liberation struggles and class politics of postwar America.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Self has challenged historians to reconsider the way that they study postwar black urban communities.
(Albert S. Broussard Journal of American History )

Review

American Babylon traces the dialectic of suburbanization and black power in my hometown of Oakland, California. Encapsulating the postwar history of hundreds of mid-sized American cities, Robert Self's original and fascinating case study historicizes city-suburb racial segregation as a creation within living memory. We cannot heal or make sense of the nation we live in now without American Babylon.
(Nell Irvin Painter, Princeton University, author of "Southern History across the Color Line" )

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 408 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press (October 13, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0691070261
• ISBN-13: 978-0691070261
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,083,208 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Robert Self teaches history at Brown University. He writes about American politics and social movements in the twentieth century and teaches a variety of courses on the same subject. His interests range widely and include the history of American cities and suburbs, the history of family, and the history of sex and sexuality in the twentieth century. He is also the co-author (with James Henretta and Rebecca Edwards) of a college-level textbook, America's History. He lives in Providence, Rhode Island.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars rigorous and accessible, February 23, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland (Politics and Society in Twentieth Century America) (Hardcover)

I read American Babylon after hearing about it on the radio, and came away impressed with the author's ability to make a remarkably complex process - the interplay of surburban development, urban decline, racial politics, and civil rights - accessible to an amateur such as myself. The book lays out a persuasive explanation of why things are they way they are in Oakland, and by (my) extension in many urban areas around the country, including my own hometown of Brooklyn. In doing so it seems to me to be the best sort of historical analysis: rigorous, remarkably detailed, and carefully documented, but useful to the public at large. Highly recommended.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If You Want to Understand American Cities, Read This Book, February 8, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland (Politics and Society in Twentieth Century America) (Hardcover)

Oakland is frequently in the news. Our school board passes a resolution asserting the language rights of African-Americans, and the country explodes in controversy. Our citizens elect a celebrity mayor, and the Wall Street Journal speculates on the reasons. None of these events are understandable without understanding Oakland's history, and Robert Self has done a terrific job of capturing its contours. He lays waste to the common myth that the Civil Rights movement was exclusively a Southern phenomenon, and reports in fascinating detail on Oakland's own Civil Rights movement. Although he reports on its most famous organization, the Black Panthers, he also describes in detail the tenacity and success of other organizations, like the Oakland Black Caucus and the East Bay Democratic Club, which produced changes in the employment and electoral rights of American-Americans.

People who want to change cities should read this book.

An Oakland College Professor

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant history that should be read by political activists, February 13, 2004

By 

California health care activist for single payer (Berkeley, California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland (Politics and Society in Twentieth Century America) (Hardcover)

Robert Self's "American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland" deserves the attention of grassroots political activists as much as academics. It is a brilliant analysis of the post-World War Two business strategy for Oakland, California and the boom (and boomerang to Oakland) in housing and jobs elsewhere in Alameda County that resulted. Self shows how the decline of Oakland was the other side of the coin in the creation of new communities in the open spaces nearby. He lays out the class and race contexts of the suburbanization process and shows the consequences for and responses by the labor movement and African Americans to the changes that were wrought. "American Babylon" thus provides, for example, an interesting account of the Black Panther Party. Finally, using this region in northern California as a case study, the book examines the origins of the anti-property tax movement, when the suburbs regime went sour. Since California is still embroiled over the same issues this book addresses -- taxes, urban revitalization, de-industrialization, racial equality, and the political and environmental impacts of suburban growth -- Robert Self's "American Babylon" could not be more timely.