Region, Race and Cities

For more than twenty-five years David Goldfield has interpreted southern urban history for audiences ranging from museumgoers to academics. His love affair with the discipline dates from its birth in the late sixties, and he has been among its primary nurturers ever since. Goldfield's approach is as unconventional as the South itself, relying heavily on works in other fields, and southern novels especially, to explain the region's diversity and distinctiveness. A solicitous citizen as well as theoretician, Goldfield strives to apply his knowledge and perspective to improving today's urban communities.

Region, Race, and Cities presents eleven of his best essays, three unseen till now, in one volume, providing an overview of the evolution of southern urban history into a vibrant and legitimate branch of southern history. Goldfield's grasp is extensive. He discusses the economic importance of the South's antebellum towns, the impact of World War II on southern cities, voting rights and black political power, issues of urban policy and quality of life, the survival of southern identity, and much more. Two principles formulated early in his career continue to guide his thinking: first, the importance of southern cities and their similarity to other urban locales in the country, possibly throughout the world; and second, the intimate interactions between the South's cities and the region as a whole.

Goldfield's catching enthusiasm for southern urban history, for the South, pervades this important work of scholarship. In the face of tremendous change, despite skyscrapers, subdivisions, and shopping malls, both city and region, Goldfield declares, have a resilience that defies homogenization and superficial analysis.

David Goldfield is Robert Lee Bailey Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He is the author of Black, White, and Southern: Race Relations and Southern Culture, among other works, and editor of the Journal of Urban History.