Overview

"One of the largest and fastest-growing cities in the South, Charlotte, North Carolina, came of age in the New South decades of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, transforming itself from a rural courthouse village to the trading and financial hub of America's premier textile manufacturing region. In this book, Thomas Hanchett traces the city's spatial evolution over the course of a century, exploring the interplay of national trends and local forces that shaped Charlotte, and, by extension, other New South urban centers. Hanchett argues that racial and economic segregation are not age-old givens, but products of a decades-long process. Well after the Civil War, Charlotte's whites and blacks, workers and business owners, all lived intermingled in a """"salt-and-pepper"""" pattern. The rise of large manufacturing enterprises in the 1880s and 1890s brought social and political upheaval, however, and the city began to sort out into a """"checkerboard"""" of distinct neighborhoods segregated by both race and class. When urban renewal and other federal funds became available in the mid- twentieth century, local leaders used the money to complete the sorting out process, creating a """"sector"""" pattern in which wealthy whites increasingly lived on one side of town and blacks on the other. |Traces the spatial evolution of Charlotte, NC, from 1875 to 1975 exploring the national and local influences that brought about racial and economic segregation."

Full Product Details

9780807823767

Table of Contents

Reviews

Author Information

Thomas W. Hanchett taught urban history and history preservation at Youngstown State University and Cornell University before becoming the staff historian at the Levine Museum of the New South in Charlotte.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available