Title: Detroit's Cold War : the origins of postwar conservatism /
Authors: Doody, Colleen.
Publisher: University of Illinois Press,
Year: 2013
Subjects: Cold War Social aspects Michigan Detroit History.; Conservatism Michigan Detroit History; Anti-communist movements Michigan Detroit History; Working class Michigan Detroit History; Catholics Political activity Michigan Detroit History; Businessmen Political activity Michigan Detroit History; Political culture Political activity Michigan Detroit History; Detroit (Mich.) Politics and government; Detroit (Mich.) Social conditions
Abstract: Detroit's Cold War: The Origins of Postwar Conservatism locates the roots of American conservatism in a city that was a nexus of labor and industry in postwar America. Drawing on meticulous archival research focusing on Detroit, Colleen Doody shows how conflict over business values and opposition to labor, anticommunism, racial animosity, and religion led to the development of a conservative ethos in the aftermath of World War II. Using Detroit - with its large population of African American and Catholic workers, strong union presence, and starkly segregated urban landscape - as a case study, Doody articulates a nuanced understanding of anticommunism during the Red Scare. Looking beyond national politics, she focuses on key debates occurring at the local level among a wide variety of common citizens. In examining this city's social and political fabric, Doody illustrates that domestic anticommunism was a cohesive, multifaceted ideology that arose less from Soviet ideological incursion than from tensions within the American public. By focusing on labor, race, religion, and the business community in one important American city, Detroit's Cold War shows American anticommunism to be not a radical departure from the past but an expression of ongoing antimodernist and antistatist tensions with American politics and society. -- Publisher's description.
Contents: New Deal Detroit, Communism, and Anticommunism -- Labor and the Birth of the Postwar Red Scare, 1945-1950 -- Race and Anticommunism, 1945-1952 -- Anticommunism and Catholicism in Cold-War Detroit -- Business, Anticomunism, and the Welfare State, 1945-1958.