Public Employee Press

Northern struggles for civil rights

If you look south as you walk the broad avenues of Harlem, you can see the gleaming skyscrapers of midtown Manhattan. The distance is only miles, but the inequality gap has been wide and enduring.

The struggle to eradicate that divide has unfolded since the 1920s and the Great Depression across the North in cities large and small, from Plainfield, N.J., to Cleveland, Detroit and New York.

Segregation enforced by law and Klan terror was largely a southern practice, and the civil rights movement is typically associated with the more publicized southern struggles, such as those in Philadelphia, Miss., Montgomery and Birmingham, Ala.

The northern way

Without passing explicit segregation laws, northern politicians, bankers and power brokers used tax and zoning policies to erect de facto housing segregation, the base for the less official yet extremely high wall of exclusion in schools and jobs.

In "Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North," historian Thomas J. Sugrue captures the rich history of the battles and successes of the freedom movement that northern Blacks built to tear down that wall. He brings to life the stories of the activist heroes and heroines who rose up in communities of color to lead these struggles.

Sugrue says his book shows "how the North is central to understanding the history of racial inequality and civil rights." The book sells online for $23, and is available in the DC 37 Ed Fund Library.

Unionists will appreciate Sugrue's nuanced portrayal of labor's role on both sides of the struggle as he depicts the fight for jobs and economic rights.

"Sweet Land" tells vividly of the fierce picket lines against segregation on construction sites in Philadelphia and at Harlem Hospital and Rochdale Village in Queens and the direct-action campaigns of the Congress of Racial Equality, as well as the role of affirmative action and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Civil Service

Sugrue explains the importance of public-sector employment for African American advancement - a subject of growing importance today as the civil service system comes under vicious attack.

In this comprehensive documentation of the northern movement, he succeeds in placing race relations and urban policy at the core of the American story.

— Jane LaTour