The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 95, July 1991 - April, 1992 Page: 428

Southwestern Historical Quarterly

ern students knew very little of their most recent and significant history. These
students-southern, black, and white-did not connect the Civil Rights move-
ment with the South, for aside from Martin Luther King being from Atlanta
and something happening in Montgomery, they viewed the whole movement
as northern oriented.
It is for these reasons that Goldfield's Black, White, and Southern should be
required reading for undergraduate history students. Aside from being well-
written in the narrative style, organized intelligently to ensure an interesting
story, and a decent length (278 pages of text), it places the Civil Rights struggle
in the context in which it developed into a movement-the South. Goldfield
emphasizes the culture of the South, heavily religious and dependent upon eti-
quette, as catalysts for the struggle. M. L. King's emphasis on nonviolence was
not so much an idealistic commitment as it was an appeal to the idea of Christi-
anity, and the violence (sometimes encouraged) by the whites embarrassed the
southern leaders. The culture of the South that had made segregation accept-
able, also destroyed it and led to a more equal South. But the social/political
successes of the 196os did not alleviate the economic inequality of the under-
class; and, as more middle-class blacks began to make it in the South, a division
within the black community developed. The Civil Rights movement only went
so far and the areas left uncovered have continued to fester into the 198os.
Goldfield's book is excellent for students or someone interested in under-
standing the complexity of the Civil Rights movement. For southern schools
(including the southwest) it should be required reading, for it places their eco-
nomic expansion into the social context. For those interested in new informa-
tion on the movement, Black, White, and Southern is not the source. Goldfield's
analysis is excellent and will guide even those well versed in Civil Rights history
through a coherent, interesting story. As a younger historian I have had few
opportunities to write good reviews, but David Goldfield deserves high praise
for Black, White, and Southern, and I for one will utilize it within my still some-
what alien southern classroom.
West Georgza College KENNETH J. BINDAS
The Urban South: A Hzstory. By Lawrence H. Larsen. (Lexington: University
Press of Kentucky, 1990. Pp. xiv+199. Editor's preface, preface, tables,
photographs, notes, essay on sources, index. $23.)
Essays on Sunbelt Ciztes and Recent Urban Amerzca. By Raymond A. Mohl, Robert
Fisher, Carl Abbott, Roger W. Lotchin, Robert B. Fairbanks, and Zane L.
Miller. Introduction by Kenneth T. Jackson. Edited by Robert B. Fairbanks
and Kathleen Underwood. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press,
1990. Pp. xiv+ 176. Preface, notes. $19.95.)
These two books deal with different aspects of southern urbanization in dif-
ferent ways. Lawrence Larsen surveys the history of the urban South (defined
here as the Confederacy, though Texas receives scant attention) since the colo-
nial period; the contributors to the second volume, which derives from the
Walter Prescott Webb Memorial Lectures series, focus on Texas and southwest-

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