Review of “Liberty Road: Black Middle-Class Suburbs and the Battle Between Civil Rights and Neoliberalism”

Abstract

Liberty Road: Black Middle-Class Suburbs and the Battle Between Civil Rights and Neoliberalism is an extraordinarily well researched and highly readable historical and ethnographic book that situates the suburbs as central sites for development of racial and political identities in the United States. Drawing on ethnographic observations, 50 interviews and archival research, Gregory Smithsimon argues that the landscape of Black suburbanization was produced by dualling forces of everyday activism for greater housing opportunities and everyday neoliberalism seeking to tear down the advances of the Civil Rights movement. In doing so, he centers Black agency in the process of expanding housing choices for African Americans and acknowledges how structural racism continues to shape those choices as well, even for more economically advantaged African Americans. In the first chapter, Beyond Blockbusting, Smithsimon uses archival research to show how the image of the blockbuster was created in the popular press and reproduced in academic literature with little basis in actual events. The blockbuster narrative that profit hungry real estate agents scared white residents in transitioning neighborhoods into selling their homes at a loss, which they then sold to unwitting Black families at a huge markup took the blame off of white residents who left and ignored the agency of Black homeseekers and Black integration activists. Instead, Smithsimon develops a fuller account of how racial transition actually happens, particularly in the suburbs, through a conscious effort on the part of multi racial constellation activists who included real estate agents, mortgage lenders, and political actors who sought integration for varied reasons and ultimately did manage to secure increased and improved housing options for Black households.