March 31, 2003 Press Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Kenneth Durr
E-mail: kdurr@historyassociates.com
Telephone: (301) 279-9697

HAI Historian Kenneth Durr Authors New Book

Kenneth D. Durr of History Associates Incorporated (HAI) based in Rockville, Maryland, has authored Behind the Backlash: White Working-Class Politics in Baltimore, 1940-1980. His nuanced look at white working-class life and politics in twentieth-century America takes readers into the neighborhoods, workplaces, and community institutions of blue-collar Baltimore in the decades after World War II.

Durr challenges notions that the "white backlash" of the 1960s and 1970s was driven by increasing race resentment. He details the rise of a working-class populism shaped by mistrust of the means and ends of postwar liberalism in the face of urban decline. Exploring the effects of desegregation, deindustrialization, recession, and the rise of urban crime, Durr shows how legitimate economic, social, and political grievances convinced white working-class Baltimoreans that they were threatened more by the actions of liberal policymakers than by the incursions of urban blacks. Behind the Backlash is available through the University of North Carolina Press at http://uncpress.unc.edu/books/T-5181.html.

History Associates provides business, government, and nonprofit organizations with professional historical research, writing, archives, and records management services. For more information, call (301) 279-9697 or visit www.historyassociates.com.