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Planning White Supremacy
Civil Rights and City Planning in Montgomery, Alabama, 1920–1970
Rebecca Coleen Retzlaff (Author)
9780817362348
Paperback / softback, published 15 November 2025
346 pages, 22 bw figures 4 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 3 cm, 0.513 kg
"Retzlaff does an excellent job of employing archival evidence at the federal, state, and local level. Overall, this is a thorough historical study of how Alabama's capital city employed racial discrimination in the twentieth-century planning of that city." —Charles E. Connerly, author of "The Most Segregated City in America": City Planning and Civil Rights in Birmingham, 1920–1980 "Planning White Supremacy is founded on research in documents previously untouched by scholars, and it explores questions that have long needed scholarly attention." —J. Mills Thornton, author of Archipelagoes of My South: Episodes in the Shaping of a Region, 1830–1965
An unflinching account of how city planning was deployed to enforce white supremacy in Montgomery, Alabama—the birthplace of the Civil Rights Movement—and how Black activists fought back, block by neighborhood block. At the heart of the Civil Rights Movement was a city meticulously designed to enforce inequality. In Planning White Supremacy: Civil Rights and City Planning in Montgomery, Alabama, 1920–1970, Rebecca Coleen Retzlaff traces how city officials used the tools of modern planning—zoning, infrastructure, housing codes, public investment, and highway construction—to suppress political power, economic opportunity, and spatial freedom for Black citizens. As the birthplace of the Civil Rights Movement, Montgomery became a battleground where urban planning and direct-action protest collided, shaping the city's culture in ways that still resonate today. Retzlaff's analysis exposes the calculated use of municipal power to control land use, displace Black communities, keep schools and neighborhoods segregated, and preserve white political dominance. By placing urban planning at the center of Montgomery's story, this groundbreaking work reframes the movement not only as a fight for voting rights and legal equality, but as a struggle for space, housing, mobility, education, and the right to live with dignity. Retzlaff also highlights the resilience and joy of the close-knit Black neighborhoods that nurtured the civil rights activists who changed history. Retzlaff reveals how urban planning decisions systematically targeted Black neighborhoods, reinforcing racial inequality under the guise of modernization. With historical depth and critical insight, Planning White Supremacy situates Montgomery within the broader context of American urban history—offering a vital perspective on the intersection of race, space, and power. Essential for scholars of urban planning, history, and racial justice, this book also provides urgent insight into how these legacies continue to shape cities and Black socioeconomic opportunities today.
List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction: City Planning for White Supremacy in Montgomery Chapter 1. Building a System of Racial Planning and Zoning in Montgomery Chapter 2. Voter Registration, Demographic Changes, and the Planning Response in the Early Postwar Years Chapter 3. Planning, Slum Clearance, and Activism Prior to the Bus Boycott Chapter 4. City Planning and the Montgomery Bus Boycott Chapter 5. Emergence of Comprehensive Citywide Slum Clearance after the Bus Boycott Chapter 6. Interstate Highway Routing as a Racial Planning Tool Chapter 7. The Freedom Riders and Neighborhood Planning for School Segregation Chapter 8. Urban Renewal and the Selma-to-Montgomery March Chapter 9. City Planning in the School Desegregation Era Chapter 10. Planning in the Post–Civil Rights Era Conclusion: People, Place, and Planning in Montgomery Notes Bibliography Index