ABSTRACT

An assessment of the benefits that African Americans derived from participating for more than a half century in the New Deal coalition must include an analysis of the federal government's urban policies. The importance of African Americans to the New Deal coalition was immediately connected to their voting strength in northern industrial cities. This chapter outlines the standard narrative describing how the Democrats became allies of African Americans in their struggle for political equality and representation in the American political system. The political coalition that secured the landmark postwar redevelopment legislation, the Housing Act of 1949, was composed of Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives. The Federal Housing Administration/Veterans Administration and urban renewal/public housing programs interacted in complex ways to shape patterns of residential segregation. For federal policy to significantly reduce residential segregation and the concentration of poor blacks in poverty in the central cities, the federal government would have to be willing to challenge local zoning and land-use practices.