Poor Atlanta: Poverty, Race, and the Limits of Sunbelt Development by LeeAnn B. Lands (review)

Abstract

88 refers to accusations, perhaps unfounded, that AFSC allies were “subversive,” but that’s all. Her book tells how, in 1952, activists organized to provide round-the-clock protection for a family that bought a Richmond, California, home and were subject to weeks of violence and harassment. Party member Jessica Mitford, in her memoir A Fine Old Conflict, describes the courageous role she and her comrades played in these events. It is to the shame of American liberals that our passion for racial justice paled in comparison to that of Communist Party members in the 1950s and even 1960s. An unavoidable shortcoming of To Live Peaceably Together is that a history of the AFSC necessarily gives short shrift not only to communists but to other allies it mentions. Each is worthy of treatment as competent as Tracy K’Meyer’s of the Quakers’ participation and occasional leadership. If white suburbanites are now to assume a role in campaigns for zoning reform, affordable housing, nondiscrimination enforcement and other programs to narrow racial inequality in housing, it will be harder if they are unaware of their many predecessors. To Live Peaceably Together competently fills that need in part, but still leaves a bigger story yet to be told to contemporary readers.