| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.3

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Race, Class, and Power in the Building of Richmond, 1870–1920. By Steven J. Hoffman. (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2004. viii, 232 pp. Paper, $39.95, ISBN 0-7864-1616-5.)

This monograph relies heavily on studies of Richmond, the urban South, race relations, and labor history, but it is a useful corrective to the uncritical boosterism of some local scholars. Richmond "was one of the few southern cities to successfully negotiate the transition from the Old South to the New" (p. 5), becoming "the dominant city of the Upper South" (p. 11) after the Civil War, a plausible claim if one excludes St. Louis, Baltimore, and Louisville. Its leaders "allowed their attitudes toward the city's African-American population to sabotage their ongoing efforts to promote the health and prosperity of the city" (p. 12). Richmond suffered a shortage of outside capital, compounded by the reluctance of its elite to invest at home; and it lacked adequate labor, failing to attract European immigrants and to keep its black workers from leaving.

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