This essay reexamines the history of public housing and the controversy it generated from the Great Depression to the Cold War. By recasting that history in the global arena, it demonstrates that the debate over public housing versus homeownership was also a debate over the meaning of American citizenship and democracy, pointing up starkly divergent notions about what was and was not American. Through an examination of national conflicts and neglected local struggles, this article further shows that the fight over public housing was far more meaningful and volatile than traditionally assumed. Both critics and advocates of public housing drew from international experiences and imagery in positioning the home as a constitutive feature of citizenship in American democracy. Fears of Bolshevism, fascism, and communism served to internationalize issues of race, space, and housing and together shaped the decision of whether a decent home was an American right or privilege.
The American City, November 1940, 5; New York Times, July 3, 1938, 42. On the importance of the home, see Jan Cohn, The Palace or the Poorhouse: The American House as a Cultural Symbol (East Lansing, 1979); Gwendolyn Wright, Building the Dream: A Social History of Housing in America (New York, 1981); Rosalyn Baxandall and Elizabeth Ewen, Picture Windows: How the Suburbs Happened (New York, 2000).
4.
Among the most important works for this essay are Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton, 2005); John F. Bauman, Public Housing, Race, and Renewal: Urban Planning in Philadelphia, 1920-1974 (Philadelphia, 1987); Bauman, Roger Biles, and Kristin Szylvian, eds., From Tenements to the Taylor Homes (University Park, PA, 2000); Lawrence J. Vale, From the Puritans to the Projects: Public Housing and Public Neighbors (Cambridge, 2000); "The Ideological Origins of Affordable Homeownership Efforts," William M. Rohe and Harry L. Watson, eds., Chasing the American Dream (Ithaca, 2007),15-40; Arnold R. Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago, 1940-1960 (Cambridge, 1983); "‘Containment’ on the Home Front: Race and Federal Housing Policy from the New Deal to the Cold War," Journal of Urban History 26 (January 2000): 158-89; Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (New York, 1985); Ronald Tobey, Charles Wetherell, and Jay Brigham, "Moving out and Settling in: Residential Mobility, Home Owning, and the Public Enframing of Citizenship, 1921-1950," American Historical Review 95 (December 1990): 1395-1422; Janet Hutchison, "Building for Babbitt: The State and the Suburban Home Ideal," Journal of Policy History 9 (1997): 184-210; Gerald Daly, "The British Origins of American Public Housing," Journal of Urban History 15 (1989): 399-434; Don Parson, Making a Better World: Public Housing, the Red Scare, and the Direction of Modern Los Angeles (Minneapolis, 2005); John F. Baranski, "Making Public Housing in San Francisco: Liberalism, Social Prejudice, and Social Activism, 1906-1976" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California Santa Barbara, 2004). Also see the March 2007 volume of the Journal of Urban History dedicated to an examination of public housing in the Americas.
5.
Rhonda Y. Williams, The Politics of Public Housing: Black Women’s Struggles against Urban Inequality (New York, 2004); Maureen A. Flanagan, Seeing with Their Hearts: Chicago Women and the Vision of the Good City (Princeton, 2002); Gail Radford, Modern Housing for America: Policy Struggles in the New Deal Era (Chicago, 1996); Robert Self, American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland (Princeton, 2003). Radford’s Modern Housing focuses on the AFL and does not discuss the role of the CIO.
6.
Thomas Bender, ed., Rethinking American History in a Global Age (Berkeley, 2002), ix. On the "internationalization" of American history, also see Daniel T. Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (Cambridge, 1998); Mary L. Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (Princeton, 2000); Thomas Borstelmann, The Cold War and the Color Line: American Race Relations in the Global Arena (Cambridge, 2001); Paul Gordon Lauren, Power and Prejudice: The Politics and Diplomacy of Racial Discrimination (Boulder, 1996); Carol Anderson, Eyes off the Prize: The United Nations and the African American Struggle for Human Rights, 1944-1955 (Cambridge, 2003); Jonathan Bell, The Liberal State on Trial: The Cold War and American Politics in the Truman Era (New York, 2004). Radford, Modern Housing, 191-98; Benjamin L. Alpers, Dictators, Democracy, and American Public Culture: Envisioning the Totalitarian Enemy, 1920s-1950s (Chapel Hill, 2003), 1. Most studies, including Radford’s and Mark Gelfand’s A Nation of Cities (New York, 1975), rely on Leonard Freedman’s Public Housing: The Politics of Poverty (New York, 1969) for their understanding of the opposition to public housing and Freedman does not examine local level struggles in the 1930s.
7.
Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings, 194.
8.
Eugenie Ladner Birch, "Woman-Made America: The Case of Early Public Housing," Journal of the American Institute of Planners 44 (April 1978), 131-35; Robert A. Fairbanks, Making Better Citizens: Housing Reform and the Community Development Strategy in Cincinnati, 1890-1960 (Urbana, 1988), 25; Mary Ritter Beard, Woman’s Work in Municipalities (New York, 1915),199-200, 212; Daphne Spain, How Women Saved the City (Minneapolis, 2001), 121; Flanagan, Seeing with Their Hearts, 91, 94. On progressive maternalism, see Molly Ladd-Taylor, Mother-Work: Women, Child Welfare, and the State, 1890-1930 (Urbana, 1994) and Gwendolyn Mink, The Wages of Motherhood (Ithaca, 1995).
9.
Jeffrey Hornstein, A Nation of Realtors (Ithaca, 2005), 5, 7, 25-6, 35, 69, 85, 114, 135; Vale, From Puritans to the Projects, 121; M. W. Folsom, A Home of Your Own-And What It Means to You (Chicago, National Association of Real Estate Boards, 1922), n.p.
10.
Hornstein, Realtors, 135; Kevin Fox Gotham, Race, Real Estate, and Uneven Development (Ithaca, 2002), 35.
11.
Karen Dunn-Haley, "The House That Uncle Sam Built: The Political Culture of Federal Housing Policy, 1919-1932" (Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University, 1995), ii, 20; New York Times, February 24, 1918, 68; July 14, 1918, 55; May, 27, 1918, 8; July 13, 1919, RE16; April 20, 1919, SM4.
12.
Bauman, Public Housing, 21; Vale, "Ideological Origins," 17-31; New York Times, April 20, 1919, RE18; Folsom, A Home of Your Own, n.p.
13.
Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette, November 22, 1920; New York Times, January 2, 1921; Lake County Times, March 1, April 29, 1918; La Crosse Tribune and Leader-Press, April 1, 1919; U.S. Department of Labor, Report of the United States Housing Corporation (Washington, D.C. 1919), 23; Edith Elmer Wood, The Housing of the Unskilled Wage Earner: America’s Next Problem (New York, 1919), 133-95, 208.
14.
"Address of President Herbert Hoover," December 2, 1931; "Address of Dr. Ray Lyman Wilbur, December 4, 1931," E. French Strother Papers, Box 5; Committee Reports, White House Conference on Home Building and Home Ownership, Box 7-all in Herbert Hoover Presidential Library; Bauman, Public Housing, 21; Vale, From the Puritans to the Projects, 120; James Ford, "The President’s Conference on Home Building and Home Ownership," Journal of Home Economics 23 (October 1931), 924; Nathaniel Keith, Politics and the Housing Crisis Since 1930, (New York, 1973), 20.
15.
Mary Susan Cole , "Catherine Bauer and the Public Housing Movement, 1926-1937" (Ph.D. dissertation, George Washington University , 1975), iv. See Bauer’s Modern Housing (1934).
16.
Radford, Modern Housing, 69; Helen Alfred, "The New Deal and Housing," Opportunity: Journal of Negro Life (January 1934): 23; Wood, Introduction to Housing: Facts and Principles (Washington, D.C., 1940), 140. See also Helen Alfred, Municipal Housing (New York, 1936).
17.
David Ricci, Good Citizenship in America (Cambridge, 2004), 161; Jo Ann E. Argersinger, Toward a New Deal in Baltimore (Chapel Hill, 1988), 95; Bauman, Biles, and Szylman, eds., From Tenements to the Taylor Homes, 110.
18.
W. H. Shippen to Colonel Hackett, March 15, 1934, Public Housing Administration (PHA)-RG 196, Project Files, Box 6, National Archives (NA); Charles Rainey to John Ellingston, September 19, 1939, John W. Edelman Collection, Box 102, Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University; American Federationist 39 (January 1932), 20; Timothy McDowell, The Wagner Housing Act (Chicago, 1957), 68.
19.
Tobey et al., "Moving Out," 1412, 1419; New York Times, December 11, 1931, 24; February 12, 1932, 23; The Journal of Housing 2 (February 1945): 25.
20.
New York Times, April 30, 1933, N1; August 22, 1933, 17; Chicago Tribune, April 8, 1933, 1; September 8, 1933, 1; November 29, 1934, 27; Argersinger, Toward a New Deal, 93; Wood, Introduction, 113-14; Bauman, Public Housing, 23; Baxandall and Ewen, Picture Windows, 55; Birch, "Woman-Made America," 131; The American City, June 1933, 5.
21.
New York Times, November 13, 1933, 6; January 17, 1933, 1; March 7, 1933, 9; March 26, 1933, O5; November 24, 1933, 2; November 25, 1933, 1; Radford, Modern Housing, 92-8.
22.
W. H. Shippen to Colonel Hackett, March 15, 1934, PHA, RG 196, Box 23, NA; New York Times, October 28, 1934, RE1; December 24, 1934, 2.
23.
Ladd-Taylor, Mother Work, 197; New York Times, January 3, 1934, 5; January 28, 1934, 16; December 24, 1934, 2.
24.
"General Statement as to Projects," March 24, 1934, Box 23; Nora Reith to Clas, August 19, 1935, and Clas to Julius Heil, October 4, 1935, Box 120, PHA, RG 196, NA; Argersinger, Toward a New Deal, 94-7; Chicago Defender, December 8, 1934; July 4, 1936; Parson, Making a Better World, 13-4; Radford, Modern Housing, 103, 106-07; McDonnell, Wagner Act, 45, 47; The American City, June 1936, 113; Wood, Introduction, 122; Chicago Tribune, November 2, 1934, 14; January 18, 1935, 8; October 4, 1935, 21.
25.
New York Times, June 5, 1935, 2; November 28, 1935, 33; December 4, 1935, 16; May 13, 1936, 42; September 6, 1936, 4; November 22, 1936, RE1; The American City, September 1934, 99; James D. Wolfinger, "From Roosevelt to Republican Majority: Race, Jobs, and Housing in Philadelphia, 1932-1955" (Ph.D. dissertation, Northwestern University, 2003), 101-02.
26.
New York Times, June 5, 1935, 2; June 23, 1935, E10; October 10, 1937, 98; Catherine Bauer and Jacob Crane, "What Every Family Should Have," Survey Graphic 29 (February 1940), 64; McDonnell, Wagner Act, 135; Wood, Introduction, 122.
27.
Parson, Making a Better World, 17-8; New York Times, October 9, 1935, 22; January 5, 1936, E8; Charles Abrams, "Housing and Politics," Survey Graphic 29 (February 1940), 91; W. Barksdale to Marvin McIntyre, January 32, 1936, Official File 63, Box 2, Franklin D. Roosevelt Papers, FDR Library.
28.
Herbert Nelson and Marion Nelson, New Homes in Old Countries (Chicago, 1937), 58, 99, 103; McDonnell, Wagner Act, 138-39. See Chicago Tribune, November 17, 1937, 12; May 26, 1938, 16.
29.
Tobey et al., "Moving Out," 1419; Cole, "Bauer," 621; New York Times, May 28, 1936, 43.
30.
Chicago Tribune, August 1, 1937, B11; June 15, 1938, 5; Wood, Introduction, 123-31; McDonnell, Wagner Act, 1; Gelfand, Nation of Cities, 199; M. B. Schnapper, ed., Public Housing in America (New York, 1939), 79-83.
31.
FDR to Straus, March 17, 1938, OF 2694, Box 2, FDR Library; New York Times, October 31, 1937, 140; "Plan of Operation for Informational Representatives to Various National Organizations," n.d., Box 101; Charles Carrigan to Sumner Wiley, July 26, 1939, Box 101; Frisbie to Edelman, October 2, 1939, Box 102; "Information Activities in Region III: Proposed Plan of Work," October 1938, Box 101; Ardoin Casgrain to Ellingston, June 19, 1939, Box 101; Langdon Post to Ellingston, July 31, 1939, Box 101; G. deFreest Larner to Ellingston, July 10, 1939, Box 101; Richard Blaisdell to Edelman, August 13, 1939, Box 102; Larner to Ellingston, June 10, 1939, Box 101; Milton Lowenthal to Ellingston, August 25, 1939, Box 102; USHA, "Press Release," September 15, 1939, Box 100; Edelman to Walter Polakov, December 2, 1939, Box 100, Edelman Collection; The American City, December 1937, 54; July 1939, 47.
32.
Edelman to James McDevitt, September 23, 1939; Edelman to Herbert Wilson, September 19, 1939, Edelman Collection, Box 100.
33.
"Informational Activities in Region II"; "Region IV"; "Region V," 1938, Box 101; Casgrain to Ellingston, June 25, 1939; Box 101; Edelman to Maurice Wilsie, December 13, 1939, Box 100; Lowenthal to Morris Miller, November 24, 1939; Frank Palmer to Edelman, September 13, 1939, Box 102; Edelman to Theodore Savage, October 11, 1939, Box 100; Robert Sentman to Ellingston, September 23, 1939, Box 102; "Informational Activities in Region V," n.d., Box 101, Edelman Collection. (On the AFL vs. CIO, see Box 100.) "Labor’s Stake in Construction Revival," May 12, 1938; "Speech before the U.S. Chamber of Commerce," October 21, 1938, AFL Papers, Mss117A, Box 26, Wisconsin State Historical Society; Chicago Tribune, September 14, 1938, 6; Homes for Workers, Housing Division Bulletin No. 3 (1937); New York Times, October 13, 1938, 38.
34.
New York Times, April 23, 1939, 146; May 22, 1942, 14; USHA, "Press Release," September 15, 1939; Edelman to Polakov, December 2, 1939, Box 100, Edelman Collection.
35.
Joseph Ruble to Horatio Hackett, November 19, 1934, PHA, Project Files, RG 196, Box 3, NA; Williams, Public Housing, 30; Chicago Defender, April 23, 1938.
Straus, "Housing-A National Achievement," 204-10; Chicago Defender, December 30, 1939; Schnapper, ed., Public Housing, 266; New York Times, August 13, RE7; October 14, 1939, 11; November 15, 1940, 22.
38.
Casgrain to Ellingston, June 1, 1939, Edelman Collection, Box 101; Wheeling News-Register, May 19, 21, 22, 23, 24, 1939.
39.
Ibid; Casgrain to Ellingston, June 16, 1939; Casgrain to Ellingston, July 31, 1939, Box 101, Edelman Collection; Wheeling News-Register, May 25, 26, 1939.
40.
Casgrain to Ellingston, July 31, 1939; New Britain Herald, July 11, 16, 17, 19, 1939; Burlington Free Press, May 9, 12, 13, 1939; New Britain Herald, July 19, 1939; Keith, Politics and the Housing Crisis, 38.
41.
New York Times, February 5, 1939, 1.
42.
Raoul DeRoussy DeSales, "What Makes an American," Atlantic Monthly 163 (March 1939), 296, 304; New York Times, February 19, 1940, 2.
43.
New York Times, September 9, 1938, 16; May 7, 1941, 20; Clipping, Box 117, John Carmody Papers, FDR Library; Wood, "That ‘One Third of a Nation,’" Survey Graphic 29 (February 1940): 83.
44.
New York Times, August 17, 1940, 6; February 19, 1941, 2; October 30, 1941, 28; December 2, 1941, 13; December 19, 1941, 24; January 6, 1942, 17; February 24, 1942, 38; May 1, 1942, 40; May 10, 1942, RE1; Chicago Defender, February 7, 1942, 6; Roger Biles, "Nathan Straus and the Failure of U.S. Public Housing, 1937-1942," The Historian 52 (Autumn 1990): 33-46.
45.
"Monthly Report of all Housing of the Federal Public Housing Authority," May 27, 1943, Box 2; Memorandum, Herbert Emmerich, March 12, 1943, Box 7, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Records of the National Housing Agency, RG 207, National Archives, College Park, Maryland (hereafter NHA); New York Times, September 15, 1940, 164; March 15, 1942, 39.
46.
R. J.Thomas to Congressman, June 1, 1942, Box 6; FPHA Bulletin, August 2, 1943, Box 2, NHA, RG 207.
47.
New York Times, March 27, 1941, 17; March 1, 1942, 40; May 28, 1942, 15; June 3, 1942, 26; September 6, 1942, 34; October 23, 1942, 17; December 6, 1942, F9; July 23, 1943, 15; Deidre Sullivan, "Letting Down the Bars: Race, Space, and Democracy in San Francisco, 1936-1964" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 2003), 43-57, 71; Sugrue, Origins of the Urban Crisis, 73-5; "Press Release," John Blandford, [1942], Box 3; FPHA Bulletin, August 16; September 27, 1943, Box 2; William Divers to Philip Klutznick, April 22, 1944; B. T. McGraw to Blandford, June 15, 1944; J. Edgar Hoover to Attorney General, May 24, 1944, Box 7, RG 207, NHA.
48.
Leslie Perry to Blandford, June 2, 1943; United Committee on Emergency Housing to Blandford, January 14, 1944; B. T. McGraw to Blandford, August 24, 1945, RG 207, NHA, Box 7; Chicago Tribune, July 12, 1943, 12.
49.
New York Times, September 6, 1942, 34; June 1, 1946, 30; Parson, Making a Better World, 59; Sullivan, "Letting Down the Bars," 71; Chicago Defender, January 19, 1946, 3; Anderson, Eyes off the Prize, 14-6, 66-75.
50.
New York Times, December 18, 1943, 25; June 28, 1946, 37; Chicago Tribune, January 21, 1947, 7; April 7, 1947, 16; National Mutual Housing Association to Leon Keyserling, September 12, 1945, Box 11; Blandford to Truman, December 14, 1945, Box 1, RG 207, NHA; Richard Davies, Housing Reform During the Truman Administration (1966), 19-20.
51.
New York Times, October 12, 1947, 52; November 29, 1947, 2; February 10, 1948, 22; Chicago Defender, June 4, 1949, 6.
52.
Shelley V. Kraemer 334, U.S. (1948); Charles Abrams, Forbidden Neighbors: A Study of Prejudice in Housing (New York, 1955), 200-21; Chicago Defender, December 24, 1948; New York Times, January 16, 1948, 30. See also Sugrue, who notes that Detroit blacks cheered the decision under the Courier’s headline "We Can Live Anywhere!" (Origins of the Urban Crisis, 182).
53.
Alexander von Hoffman, "A Study in Contradictions: The Origins and Legacy of the Housing Act of 1949," Housing Policy Debate11(2000): 299-326; New York Times, September 3, 1947, 28; February 28, 1948 , 21; May 13, 1949, 1; June 18, 1949, 1, 2; For the impact of anti-communism on the domestic reform agenda, see Bell, Liberal State, xviii, 273.
54.
New York Times, February 25, 1948, 14; November 19, 1948, 49; June 29, 1949, 26, September 25, 1949, R2 (contains Bliss quotation); December 3, 1949, 23; February 26, 1950, R1; "Public Housing- Disastrous Here and Abroad," Speech of Hon. Ralph W. Gwinn, June 4, 1948, Staff File, Presidential Papers, Box 47, Dwight Eisenhower Presidential Library; Chicago Tribune, June 19, 1949, 38; April 19, 1950, A8.
55.
New York Times, January 6, 1949, 3; January 26, 1949, 46; June 18, 1949, 1; September 7, 1952, 37; November 11, 1952, 39; March 31, 1954, 2; Chicago Tribune, February 24, 1950, 3; July 24, 1950, 1; January 21, 1951, SA2; January 29, 1951, A7; May 11, 1952, 16; November 25, 1953, B7. See Parson, Making a Better World, 120-21.
56.
New York Times, May 4, 1949, 5; July 16, 1949, 16; September 10, 1949, 15; October 12, 1949, 59; September 6, 1952, 14; The Capital Times, November 25, 1950; "Short Speech on Housing," 1949, George Elsey Papers, Box 34, Harry S. Truman Presidential Library; Chicago Tribune, February 24, 1950, 3; March 31, 1954, 26; Hornstein, Realtors, 186-89; Chicago Defender, May 9, 1953, 4.
57.
Chicago Tribune, March 2, 1950, 1; April 15, 1959, 10; May 14, 1950, SW2; July 24, 1950; January 29, 1951, A7; January 31, 1952; N1; May 23, 1953, 10; New York Times, April 13, 1952, 16; August 10, 1955, 24.
58.
New York Times, February 24, 1947, 36; July 19, 1947, 16; Parson, Making a Better World, 117-26.
59.
Paul Douglas, "Democracy Can’t Live in These Houses," Collier’s, July 9, 1949, 22; Anderson, Eyes Off the Prize, 140-65; New York Times, October 22, 1947, 60; March 20, 1951, 59; July 30, 1951, 14; April 20, 1952, R1; May 10, 1952, 16; Bell, Liberal State, 142-43; Chicago Defender, June 4, 1949, 6; Davies, Truman, 96.
60.
New York Times, February 25, 1948, 14; November 19, 1948, 49; June 29, 1949, 26; The Journal of Housing 2 (April 1945): 66 and (February 1946): 50.
61.
New York Times, February 26, 1950, R1; October 12, 1958, E8; Chicago Defender, November 27, 1954; Chicago Tribune, June 19, 1949, 38; April 19, 1950, A8; December 27, 1951, W1.
62.
New York Times, January 1, 1947, 25; October 12, 1947, 52; November 29, 1947, 2; June 23, 1948, 26; December 17, 1949, 2; March 20, 1951, 59; April 20, 1952, R1; May 7, 1952, 19; April 26, 1953, R1; November 8, 1955, 13; May 19, 1955, 24; August 8, 1955, 9; July 22, 1955, 1, 13; August 4, 1956, 1. For additional information on the impact of the Gwinn Amendment on tenant groups, see Parson, Making a Better World, 189-91.
63.
Oberlander and Newbrun, Houser, 256-60; Bauer, "The Dreary Deadlock of Public Housing," Architectural Forum (May 1957): 140-41, 219, 221. On tenants’ support of housing, see Gelfand, Nation of Cities, 204-05 and J. S. Fuerst, When Public Housing Was Paradise: Building Community in Chicago (Westport, CT, 2003).
