Elusive Utopia (e-book) (used book) | bookbook.eu

Description

Because it embraced radical racial egalitarianism in 1835, Oberlin, Ohio, stood in the vanguard of the quest for abolition and black freedom in the antebellum period. Today, residents, visitors, and scholars still celebrate its historic role in abolition, integration, and the quest for equality. Yet after the Civil War, Oberlin's resolute stand for racial justice gave way; black activists became disillusioned as they fought in vain against the imposition of a color line, while white leaders made excuses for their acceptance of segregation and race-based inequality. Elusive Utopia, by noted historians and longtime Oberlin College faculty members Gary Kornblith and Carol Lasser, tells the story of how, over most of its first century, the people of Oberlin, black and white, understood and acted upon their changing understandings of race such that their town came to experience a color line by the early decades of the twentieth century.