Trumbull Talk: White Vernacular and the Politics of Persecution, 1953-1954

Abstract

Following in the microhistory tradition, this essay draws on an unpublished report by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to delve deeply into the political worldviews of working-class white mill workers in 1950s South Deering, Chicago, during their massive resistance to the racial integration of a local public housing project in the post-World War II period. A close analysis of casual conversations between members of this insular white community demonstrates that an intense fear of demographic change, exacerbated by a certainty that white city elites had “sold out their race” and were working with civil rights organizations to promote the interests of Black Chicagoans, instilled in South Deering’s whites a sense of powerlessness that failed to ease even as evidence mounted that white city leaders were giving the neighborhood segregationists much of what they wanted.