Colored Property: State Policy and White Racial Politics in Suburban America

In Colored Property, David M. P. Freund shows how federal intervention spurred a dramatic shift in the language and logic of racial integration in residential neighborhoods after World War II-away from invocations of a mythical racial hierarchy and toward talk of markets, property, and citizenship.

Freund traces the emergence of a powerful public-private alliance that facilitated postwar suburban growth across the nation with federal programs that significantly favored whites. Then, showing ...