Race, Ethnicity, and Urbanization: Selected Essays

This book brings together for the first time Howard Rabinowitz's pioneering work in three very different but often overlapping fields-race relations, ethnicity, and urban history. In a series of highly original essays, Rabinowitz introduces readers to some of the most important recent developments in these fields, including the changing assessments of the nature of black leadership, the origins of segregation, the expansion of urban history to include the South and the West, and the writing of ethnic history.

Rabinowitz's introduction, a scathing critique of the "Newest Historicism" dominated by the "politically and poststructurally correct," is sure to provoke debate among historians. "Intellectual word games and reflecting on the reflections of others is now in," he writes. "Doing history is out."

Concentrating on the decades after the Civil War, Rabinowitz traces health and welfare policies toward blacks and the shift from white to black teachers in the Negro schools of the urban South to show how the South moved from a policy of exclusion to one of segregation. He examines the legacy of Reconstruction in the conflict between blacks and police in the urban South, as well as in the careers of three African American leaders of the Reconstruction era: Blanche K. Bruce, Robert Elliot, and Holland Thompson. The influences of ethnicity on the study of history are discussed in several essays.

Students and scholars of southern history, African American studies, and urban history will gain much from this cross-disciplinary approach. Well-written and insightful, Race, Ethnicity, and Urbanization is an excellent introduction to Howard Rabinowitz's innovative work.