A CITY WITHIN A CITY: THE SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CONSTRUCTION OF SEGREGATED SPACE IN GRAND RAPIDS, MICHIGAN 1945-1975

Todd Ephraim Robinson

This study examines the dialectic of metropolitan spatial stratification during the era of civil rights in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Focusing primarily on the color of space, this dissertation challenges conventional notions of "de facto" metropolitan development and illustrates how the construction of segregated space in Grand Rapids materialized not as a natural result of housing migration patterns, but instead as a consequence of discriminatory structural forces combined with a firm pattern of white hostility. In an effort to reexamine conventional narratives of northern metropolitan postwar expansion, this dissertation chronicles the two main areas of housing and schools, in tandem, with additional consideration to black uplift, civil rights issues, and the black freedom struggle. By examining rampant structural barriers and active efforts by white individuals to confine minorities to a circumscribed geographical location within the central city, this study reveals how Grand Rapids evolved as a "city within a city" with a black core and a white periphery. The postwar reshaping of the American metropolis represented a moment of historical possibility to reduce racial anxiety, but in the end it caused the opposite effect. In short, this dissertation conceptualizes space as a racial category that is actively constructed and reconstructed by individuals within the confines of specific structural mechanisms, which ultimately produced a landscape of inequality.