Beware! Colored Property might very well outrage some readers. Whether or not it does – depending upon an individual's sensibilities – it deserves a key place in the historical and sociological scholarship of metropolitan America. Unquestionably this figures as something of a welcome sequel to Arnold R. Hirsch's The Making of the Second Ghetto (1983) and Thomas J. Sugrue's The Origins of the Urban Crisis (1996), which have played powerful roles in framing scholarly agendas.
David M.P. Freund documents, in an abundance of detail focused on metropolitan Detroit between 1930 and 1964, the insidious ways in which racial discrimination played out in the marketplace of home ownership in the decades before and after World War II. One key dimension of this book comprises a series of deeply excavated case studies, among them Dearborn and Royal Oak. The author has unearthed in copious detail how local politicians meticulously advanced segregation within their communities. Particular attention is devoted to Mayor Orville L. Hubbard of Dearborn, famously described in the New York Times Magazine (12 January 1969) as ‘a three-hundred pound Northern redneck’. Hubbard held office without interruption from 1941 until 1978; thanks to the author we now understand the impetuous wiles of his championship of segregation. It is the odious story about a bit player which surely should find its niche in the storyline of American urban history.
But there is a further dimension of this book underscored by Freund's invocation of the term ‘state policy’ in its subtitle. In addition to its localized case studies, Colored Property examines the mutually reinforcing roles of the public and private sectors in perpetuating – indeed solidifying – discriminatory policies. While the author is not the first to uncover the foibles of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal in such affairs, Colored Property goes to enormous lengths to enhance reader appreciation of this narrative. Freund argues that ‘it was the promotion of this calculus by myriad local, regional, and national bodies, both public and private that made whites’ desire for racial exclusion both an enormously powerful political force and, in important ways, a largely invisible one’ (p. 230). However, as much as I appreciate the substantial achievement of this benchmark study, a coda would have proven instructive. In the very historical moment – the late 1960s – when Freund formulates his conclusion, consequential events entered into play in the realm of housing. In 1966 a momentous federal case, Gautreaux v. The Chicago Housing Authority, was filed, claiming intentional violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The outcome, favouring the plaintiffs, made provision for rent and construction subsidies enabling residents of public housing to relocate into largely white suburban communities where they occupied private-sector housing units. By the time that the court-mandated objectives were fulfilled in 1998 some 8,100 households had benefited. Gautreaux preceded the Mount Laurel decisions rendered by New Jersey's supreme court (1975, 1983 and 1986) that required municipalities to provide affordable housing. Considered in tandem, Gautreaux and Mount Laurel fostered dispersed open housing on a much-enlarged geographical plane, in the former instance in the six-county metropolis of Chicago and in the latter on a statewide basis.
Unquestionably Colored Property is a most compelling volume to read and to contemplate. Its scholarship is prodigious. It findings are searing. Surely this book is destined to exert enduring influence. It is required reading for a multiplicity of audiences, including historians, social scientists, legal scholars, journalists and policy makers. Undoubtedly David Freund's Colored Property will also be cited in American jurisprudence.
