show bio Kevin Kruse

Kevin Kruse is an associate professor in history at Princeton University. Kruse is also the author of “White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism,” and has been honored as one of America’s “Innovators in the Arts and Sciences” by the Smithsonian Magazine. Kruse was selected as one of the top young historians in the country by the History News Network. He has made many academic attributions as co-author of “The New Suburban History: Historical Societies of Urban America,” and editor of “The Spaces of the Modern City: Imaginaries, Politics, and Everyday Life.”

White Flight
Date: 3/10/2008

A professor of history at Princeton University, Kevin Kruse discusses his book that explains the causes and consequence of “White Flight” in Atlanta and elsewhere. Seeking to understand segregationists on their own terms, “White Flight” moves past simple stereotypes to explore the meaning of white resistance. Kruse finds that segregationists didn’t view themselves in terms of what they opposed but rather in terms of what they supported, which was the conventional wisdom then and now. According to Kruse, segregationists were not only fighting against the rights of others: in their minds they were fighting for rights of their own. Kruse says that many of these rights were subsumed under a larger concept that called freedom of association. In the end, Kruse finds segregationist resistance, which failed to stop the Civil Rights Movement, has nevertheless managed to preserve the world of segregation and even perfect it in subtler and stronger forms.

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