"They Dealt Themselves In": White Antiracists in New York City and Los Angeles, 1935–1960

• In Event: Race, Place, and Genealogies of Empowerment

Abstract

This paper examines the biographies of four White activists (Alice Citron, Algernon Black, Carey McWilliams, Alice McGrath) who worked in interracial organizations to defend the rights of African American and Mexican American youth, promote multiethnic literature and history, and fight racial discrimination in New York City and Los Angeles during the 1930s and 1940s. They went beyond the “colorblind perspective” common among intercultural educators and situated efforts to promote diversity in schools and neighborhoods as part of a larger struggle against fascism and racism. Their lives bridged the Popular Front era in the 1930s and early 1940s, the political persecution of progressives during the Cold War years, and civil rights organizing in the 1950s and early 1960s.

Author

• Lauri Johnson, Boston College
  Presenting Author