Sorting Out the New South City Race, Class, and Urban Development in Charlotte,1875–1975 by David Goldfield (Review)

Sorting Out the New South City Race,Class, and Urban Development in Charlotte,1875–1975 by Tom Hanchett (University of North Carolina Press, 1998)

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Sorting Out the New South City Race, Class, and Urban Development in Charlotte,1875–1975 by David Goldfield (Review)

by David Goldfield
Southern Cultures, Vol. 6, No. 2: Summer 2000

University of North Carolina Press, 1998

Though foreigners often express shock at the sprawling confusion of American cities, Thomas Hanchett demonstrates that there is method in this madness in his analysis of Charlotte, North Carolina. The book is more than a spatial accounting of Charlotte’s neighborhood business district development. Hanchett places growth in regional, political, economic, and cultural context. This is a southern story of emergence of mercantile, industrial banking, and real estate entrepreneurs and how they shaped a city in an era of black disenfranchisement, Jim Crow, and the waning political power of white workers.

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