“Neighborliness Is Nonspatial”: Howard Thurman and the Search for Integration and Common Ground

Abstract

This article, by looking at the life, career, and thought of Howard Thurman, one of the most significant African American religious thinkers of the twentieth century, argues that one way to understand the call for racial integration by Thurman and others in the mid-century is through the demand to restructure urban space in less exclusive ways. The failure to realize this, in the 1960s, led to calls for defending “black space” in cities, although this too proved to be a failure. Thurman’s spatial understanding of integration is a still relevant intervention in understanding the complexities of race and racial conflict in urban areas.