Suchergebnisse

This article suggests the importance of studying local peace movements in postwar America, as civil rights historians have been doing for two decades. The article also argues that peace and civil rights often reflected the same progressive impulse for social justice—thus the importance of exploring the relationships and interconnections between the two movements. This case study of peace and civil rights in postwar Miami documents the role of politically progressive Jews, especially Jewish women, in forging a social justice movement focused on peace, civil liberties, and civil rights. Mostly newcomers from northern cities, a small group of activist Jews played a major organizational role in local branches of such civil rights and peace groups as the Civil Rights Congress, the Congress of Racial Equality, the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, and Women Strike for Peace. For those who chose the activist path, peace and civil rights became inseparable components of a local social justice crusade challenging racial segregation and national Cold War policies.

When construction began on the urban expressways of the new Interstate Highway System in the late 1950s, homes, businesses, schools, and churches began to fall before bulldozers and wrecking crews. Entire neighborhoods, as well as parks, historic districts, and environmentally sensitive areas, were slated for demolition to make way for new expressways. Highway builders leveled central city areas where few people had cars so that automobile owners from other places could drive to and through the city on the big, new roads. As one analyst of postwar America put it: "The desire of the car owner to take his car wherever he went no matter what the social cost drove the Interstate Highway System, with all the force and lethal effect of a dagger, into the heart of the American city." In response, citizen activists in many cities challenged the routing decisions made by state and federal highway engineers. This Freeway Revolt found its first expression in San Francisco in the late 1950s, and eventually spread across urban America. By the late 1960s, freeway fighters began to win a few battles, as some urban expressways were postponed, cancelled, or shift ed to alternative route corridors.