Offers a collection of ten insightful essays that illuminate the little-known history and increasing presence of Asian immigrants in the American southeast

In sharp contrast to the “melting pot” reputation of the United States, the American South—with its history of slavery, Jim Crow, and the civil rights movement—has been perceived in stark and simplistic demographic terms. In Far East, Down South, editors Raymond A. Mohl, John E. Van Sant, and Chizuru Saeki provide a collection of essential essays that restores and explores an overlooked part of the South’s story—that of Asian immigration to the region.
 
These essays form a comprehensive overview of key episodes and issues in the history of Asian immigrants to the South. During Reconstruction, southern entrepreneurs experimented with the replacement of slave labor with Chinese workers. As in the West, Chinese laborers played a role in the development of railroads. Japanese farmers also played a more widespread role than is usually believed. Filipino sailors recruited by the US Navy in the early decades of the twentieth century often settled with their families in the vicinity of naval ports such as Corpus Christi, Biloxi, and Pensacola. Internment camps brought Japanese Americans to Arkansas. Marriages between American servicemen and Japanese, Korean, Filipina, Vietnamese, and nationals in other theaters of war created many thousands of blended families in the South. In recent decades, the South is the destination of internal immigration as Asian Americans spread out from immigrant enclaves in West Coast and Northeast urban areas.
 
Taken together, the book’s essays document numerous fascinating themes: the historic presence of Asians in the South dating back to the mid-nineteenth century; the sources of numerous waves of contemporary Asian immigration to the South; and the steady spread of Asians out from the coastal port cities. Far East, Down South adds a vital new dimension to popular understanding of southern history.

This new, expanded edition brings the story of the Interstates into the twenty-first century.  It includes an account of the destruction of homes, businesses, and communities as the urban expressways of the highway network destroyed large portions of the nation’s central cities.  Mohl and Rose analyze the subsequent urban freeway revolts, when citizen protest groups battled highway builders in San Francisco, Baltimore, Memphis, New Orleans, Washington, DC, and other cities.  Their detailed research in the archival records of the Bureau of Public Roads, the Federal Highway Administration, and the U.S. Department of Transportation brings to light significant evidence of federal action to tame the spreading freeway revolts, curb the authority of state highway engineers, and promote the devolution of transportation decision making to the state and regional level.  They analyze the passage of congressional legislation in the 1990s, especially the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA), that initiated a major shift of Highway Trust Fund dollars to mass transit and light rail, as well as to hiking trails and bike lanes.  Mohl and Rose conclude with the surprising popularity of the recent freeway teardown movement, an effort to replace deteriorating, environmentally damaging, and sometimes dangerous elevated expressway segments through the inner cities.  Sometimes led by former anti-highway activists of the 1960s and 1970s, teardown movements aim to restore the urban street grid, provide space for new streetcar lines, and promote urban revitalization efforts.  This revised edition continues to be marked by accessible writing and solid research by two well-known scholars.

Raymond A. Mohl is distinguished professor of history at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.  He is the author of South of the South: Jewish Activists and the Civil Rights Movement in Miami, 1945-1960 and co-editor of The Making of Urban America, 3rd edition.

Mark H. Rose is professor of history at Florida Atlantic University. He is the author of Cities of Light and Heat: Domesticating Gas and Electricity in Urban America and coauthor of The Best Transportation System in the World: Railroads, Trucks, Airlines and American Public Policy in the Twentieth Century.


Praise for the previous edition of Interstate

"The tale that Mark Rose relates in great detail is an illuminating one of pressure politics, revealing aspects of the fragmentation of social and political life rarely examined by scholars." —Richard Lowitt, American Studies

"The best researched, most readable single document on the formation of U.S. auto-dominant policy. . . ." —Robert C. Stuart, Policy Studies Journal

"Rose has done pioneering work in highway history.  This is a small book but an important one.  We are becoming more acutely aware that in our world technology and politics are inextricably intertwined.  Here is an excellent case study."—John B. Rae, ISIS

"An extensively researched, brief, and important study that adds to our knowledge of interest group politics and the impact of the motor vehicle in the United States."
—Blaine A. Brownell, American Historical Review

"An excellent contribution to political and transportation history. . . . an extremely useful account of the various hearings, conferences, and behind-the-scenes maneuverings that finally led to federal absorption of 90 percent of construction costs through the instrumentality of the Highway Trust Fund. . . . an impressive beginning to historical scholarship on a vastly important topic."
—Kenneth T. Jackson, Journal of American History

"A remarkably thorough, objective survey and analysis of the role of various interest groups in fashioning highway policies in the 1940s and 1950s. . . . a pioneer, definitive examination of highway development and transportation policy-making from the standpoints of various special interest groups."
—Michael Robinson, Public Works Historical Society

"This volume will fill an important area in many collections that probably have several volumes on transportation development after 1956.  Persons interested in political processes, policy formation, and urban history will find this volume a useful and important contribution toward understanding the post-World War II period."
—Choice

In The Feminine Mystique, Jewish-raised Betty Friedan struck out against a postwar American culture that pressured women to play the role of subservient housewives. However, Friedan never acknowledged that many American women refused to retreat from public life during these years. Now, A Jewish Feminine Mystique? examines how Jewish women sought opportunities and created images that defied the stereotypes and prescriptive ideology of the "feminine mystique."

As workers with or without pay, social justice activists, community builders, entertainers, and businesswomen, most Jewish women championed responsibilities outside their homes. Jewishness played a role in shaping their choices, shattering Friedan's assumptions about how middle-class women lived in the postwar years. Focusing on ordinary Jewish women as well as prominent figures such as Judy Holliday, Jennie Grossinger, and Herman Wouk's fictional Marjorie Morningstar, leading scholars explore the wide canvas upon which American Jewish women made their mark after the Second World War.

The recent riots in Los Angeles brought the urban crisis back to the center of public policy debates in Washington, D.C., and in urban areas throughout the United States. The contributors to this volume examine the major policy issues--race, housing, transportation, poverty, the changing environment, the effects of the global economy--confronting contemporary American cities.

Raymond A. Mohl begins with an extended discussion of the origins, evolution, and current state of Federal involvement in urban centers. Michael B. Katz follows with an insightful look at poverty in turn-of-the-century New York and the attempts to ameliorate the desperate plight of the poor during this period of rapid economic growth. Arnold R. Hirsch, Mohl, and David R. Goldfield then pursue different facets of the racial dilemma confronting American cities. Hirsch discusses historical dimensions of residential segregation and public policy, while Mohl uses Overtown, Miami, as a case study of the social impact of the construction of interstate highways in urban communities. David Goldfield explores the political ramifications and incongruities of contemporary urban race relations.

Finally, Carl Abbott and Sam Bass Warner, Jr., examine the impact of global economic developments and the environmental implications of past policy choices. Collectively, the authors show us where we have been, some of the needs that must be addressed, and the urban policy alternatives we face.