Description
Founded as a utopian experiment in 1833, Oberlin embraced radical racial egalitarianism in its formative years. By the eve of the Civil War, when 20 percent of its local population was black, the community modeled progressive racial relations that, while imperfect, shone as strikingly more advanced than in either the American South or North. Emancipation and the passage of the Civil War amendments seemed to confirm Oberlin's egalitarian values. Yet, contrary to the expectations of its idealistic founders, Oberlin's residents of color fell increasingly behind their white peers economically in the years after the war. Moreover, leaders of the white-dominated temperance movement conflated class, color, and respectability, resulting in stigmatization of black residents. Over time, many white Oberlinians came to view black poverty as the result of personal failings, practiced residential segregation, endorsed racially differentiated education in public schools, and excluded people of color from local government. By 1920, Oberlin's racial utopian vision had dissipated, leaving the community to join the racist mainstream of American society.
Drawing from newspapers, pamphlets, organizational records, memoirs, census materials and tax lists, Elusive Utopia traces the rise and fall of Oberlin's idealistic vision and commitment to racial equality in a pivotal era in American history.
About the Author
Gary J. Kornblith, emeritus professor of history at Oberlin College, has published Slavery and Sectional Strife in the Early American Republic, 1776-1821 and Capitalism Takes Command: The Social Transformation of Nineteenth-Century America.
Carol Lasser, emeritus professor of history at Oberlin College, has published Educating Men and Women Together: Coeducation in a Changing World and Antebellum American Women: Private, Public, Partisan.
Book Information
ISBN 9780807176245
Author Gary Kornblith
Format Paperback
Page Count 344
Imprint Louisiana State University Press
Publisher Louisiana State University Press
Weight(grams) 333g