The Roots of Diversity: Fair Housing and the End of Racial Exclusion in Montgomery County
by Bennett Miller
Racial divisions have a long history in Montgomery County. They stretch back through centuries of slavery and through years of violence that continued to afflict African Americans after emancipation. The story of housing segregation, however, revolves around the more recent process of suburbanization, which reshaped the county in the decades before and after World War II. In the mid-1960s, thousands of county residents mobilized to fight against housing discrimination, which excluded Black Americans from Montgomery County’s growing suburban neighborhoods. In this newest article in the Unfinished Revolution series, Ben Miller explores the ideological and economic motivations that drove the fair housing movement, and how it ultimately led to the transformation of the county’s demographics and self-identity.