Midwest Unrest

1960s Urban Rebellions and the Black Freedom Movement

Ashley Howard

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2025
• Print ISBN: 9781469684864, 9781469684857
• eBook ISBN: 9781469684871
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

In the nation’s so-called heartland, racism is sometimes subtler than in other parts of the country but just as insidious. When Black communities across the United States went up in flames in the 1960s, Midwest cities, where racial inequity was endemic, were among those most likely to burn. Midwest Unrest explores those rebellions, paying particular attention to the ways that region, race, class, and gender all played critical and often overlapping roles in shaping Black people’s resistance to racialized oppression.

Focusing on the uprisings in three midsize midwestern cities—Cincinnati, Ohio;
Omaha, Nebraska; and Milwaukee, Wisconsin—Ashley Howard argues that urban rebellions were a working-class response to the failure of traditional civil rights activism and growing fissures between the Black working and middle classes. Utilizing arrest records, Kerner Commission documents, and author-conducted oral history interviews, Howard registers the significant impact the rebellions had in transforming the consciousness of African Americans and in altering the relationship between Black urban communities and the state. Specifically, multiple parties, including municipal governments, city residents, and most importantly rebels, wielded urban revolt as a political tool to achieve their own objectives. Revealing a new dimension of the Black Freedom Movement, Howard moves the understanding of these disturbances from aberrant acts of violence to historically contingent acts of resistance, highlighting the coeval nature of organized protests and violent outbursts.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Halftitle Page
• Introduction This Ain’t No Riot
• 1 Midwestern Myth, Midwestern Realities
• 2 This Can’t Be the Parade
• 3 A Creative War
• 4 It’s Time to Stop Asking and Start Taking
• 5 Black Men (and Women), Are You Ready?
• 6 The Changing Same
• Conclusion Revenant Revolt
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index