Michael Savage

Biography

Savage’s dissertation, "The Metropolitan Moment: Municipal Boundaries, Segregation, and Civil Rights Possibilities in the American North," considers the relationship between urban-suburban conflict and the struggle for racial equality in twentieth-century America. Focusing on the intersection of urban-suburban differences and civil rights struggles in metropolitan Boston, Detroit, and Philadelphia, Savage examines how suburban racial and class exclusion shaped efforts to desegregate housing and education in central cities and suburbs alike, closing off some possibilities and opening up others, particularly in terms of interracial coalition-building. Beginning in the 1960s, diverse sources – ranging from self-interested urban segregationists to suburban open housing advocates – similarly articulated grievances about civil rights remedies that exempted the majority-white suburbs, and pushed for metropolitan-wide remedies that reached beyond the boundaries of the central cities. The Supreme Court’s 1974 decision in Milliken v. Bradley significantly diminished, but did not entirely destroy, this metropolitan orientation. Savage’s dissertation, "The Metropolitan Moment: Municipal Boundaries, Segregation, and Civil Rights Possibilities in the American North," considers the relationship between urban-suburban conflict and the struggle for racial equality in twentieth-century America. Focusing on the intersection of urban-suburban differences and civil rights struggles in metropolitan Boston, Detroit, and Philadelphia, Savage examines how suburban racial and class exclusion shaped efforts to desegregate housing and education in central cities and suburbs alike, closing off some possibilities and opening up others, particularly in terms of interracial coalition-building. Beginning in the 1960s, diverse sources – ranging from self-interested urban segregationists to suburban open housing advocates – similarly articulated grievances about civil rights remedies that exempted the majority-white suburbs, and pushed for metropolitan-wide remedies that reached beyond the boundaries of the central cities. The Supreme Court’s 1974 decision in Milliken v. Bradley significantly diminished, but did not entirely destroy, this metropolitan orientation.

Research Interest

History