Podcast: Assembly Line Housing: Walter P. Reuther, George Romney, and Operation Breakthrough – Part 2
Posted August 14th, 2018 by teller
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- African Americans--Michigan--Detroit--History--20th century
- African Americans--Michigan--Detroit--Social conditions--20th century
- City planning
- Collective bargaining
- Detroit--economic conditions
- Detroit--race relations
- Detroit--social conditions
- Discrimination in housing--Michigan
- Discrimination in mortgage loans
- Housing
- Housing development--Michigan--Detroit
- Integration
- Labor unions
- Minorities--Housing
- Nixon, Richard M. (Richard Milhous), 1913-1994
- Race relations
- Racism
- Reuther, Walter, 1907-1970
- Romney, George
- Segregation
- Urban renewal
In the second of a two-part series, Dr. Kristin M. Szylvian explains how racial segregation and the fear of declining property values ultimately scuttled Operation Breakthrough, a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Program early in the Nixon administration to use union-made manufactured housing to create racially- and economically-integrated housing communities throughout the country. She argues that Walter Reuther and programs like Operation Breakthrough, despite its collapse, have shown that non-profit and cooperative housing can be used to create home security in disadvantaged communities, especially in the lingering wake of the home finance crisis of 2007.
Related Collections
UAW President’s Office: Walter P. Reuther Records
Episode Credits
Producers: Dan Golodner and Troy Eller English
Host: Dan Golodner
Interviewee: Kristin M. Szylvian
Sound: Troy Eller English
With support from the Reuther Podcast Collective: Bart Bealmear, Elizabeth Clemens, Meghan Courtney, Troy Eller English, Dan Golodner, Paul Neirink, and Mary Wallace