Public Policy and Black Political Violence

Abstract

Corporate and union power shaped the central city’s adoption of policies intended to stimulate economic growth — Urban Renewal — and maintain social control — the War on Poverty. If their power influenced the causes of public policies designed to serve their interests, it could not control the consequences of those policies. By the late 1960s, the black riots had razed cities across the country. What role did public policies — policies of growth and social control — have in this apparently national breakdown in urban social control?