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Book Review
| Race Work: The Rise of Civil Rights in the Urban West. Race and Ethnicity in the American West Series. By Matthew C. Whitaker. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005. xiv + 382 pp. Illustrations, tables, notes, bibliography, index. $35.00.)
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Race Work is a wonderful biography of a leading Phoenix civil rights couple, Eleanor and Lincoln Ragsdale, which illustrates large themes in postwar African American civil rights history from just after World War II, when the couple arrived in Phoenix, through the 1990s. It rightfully highlights the importance of such persistent local activism. As Matthew C. Whitaker explains, "Race Work uses the lives of the Ragsdales to frame, view, and pursue themes of domination, resistance, interracial coalition building, race, gender and place against the backdrop of the civil rights and post-civil rights eras" (p. 6). |
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Whitaker re-centers the Ragsdales, who are part of an activist generation often seen as somewhat ineffective for focusing on legal and political reform and not, supposedly, economic change. Whitaker shows that they deserve a place in civil rights history both because they paved the path for later activism and because their work achieved important reforms from the 1940s through the 1990s. The Ragsdales and their cohort helped desegregate schools, housing, work places, and elite social clubs and worked for Black political representation. One of Race Work's greatest contributions (which Whitaker does not explicitly mention) is to illustrate this continuity in activism. Moreover, Whitaker rightfully hints at such local struggles' importance for national civil rights. |
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Among Race Work's most stimulating facets is its placement of mid-twentieth-century African American activism in an interracial framework. Whitaker argues that black activists sought support from progressive white Phoenicians because the black community was too small to provide a critical mass. His argument about the failure of cooperation between African Americans and Mexican Americans, the city's largest minority group, is especially intriguing: tensions between the two communities, which stemmed largely from Mexican Americans' attempt to "pass" as white ethnics (seemingly a pragmatic business success strategy) and African Americans' frustration with this approach, prevented long-term alliances. |
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Race Work's strengths are also its minor weaknesses. It succeeds beautifully as a biography of the Ragsdales. But less fully achieves its goal of illustrating the larger history of Phoenix civil rights struggles. It equates Phoenix civil rights activism with the Ragsdales' cohort a little too closely. Black migrants like the Ragsdales, and the 952 others who arrived after 1940, clearly changed the face of Phoenix activism. But did the other 4,263 prewar African American residents play any role (p. 80)? Because Whitaker begins the story of Phoenix civil rights activism with the Ragsdales' arrival, with an occasional nod to earlier activism, one wonders whether they and their cohort really were almost entirely responsible. Additionally, the discussion of the Ragsdales' motivations concerning interracial activism raises unanswered questions about Mexican Americans' and progressive whites' motivations. |
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Last, while Race Work nicely contextualizes the Phoenix struggle in a national civil rights narrative, it could pay more attention to the local political context. For example, it briefly mentions that the Cold War made Phoenix activism difficult, yet an intriguing incident in which a radio talk show host accuses the NAACP of communism begs further analysis of the Cold War's impact. |
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Overall, though, this well-written, insightful, and important study places the Ragsdales in their rightful historical place while enhancing our understanding of western urban African Americans' struggles. |
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| Shana Bernstein
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| Southwestern University |
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ISSN 1939-8603
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