Threatening Property

Elizabeth Herbin-Triant is an assistant professor in the Department of History at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. She received her Ph.D. from Columbia University, as a student of Eric Foner's. Her articles have appeared in The Journal of Southern History and Agricultural History.Elizabeth A. Herbin-Triant is assistant professor of history at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.

Adrienne Monteith Petty, author of Standing Their Ground: Small Farmers in North Carolina Since the Civil War:
Skillfully combining local and transnational approaches, Threatening Property reveals the class struggle underlying campaigns for residential segregation in the South, shattering the myth of a unity of interests among white southerners. Following in the tradition of C. Vann Woodward, Elizabeth Herbin-Triant offers a nuanced and sophisticated analysis of Jim Crow’s contested career.

Kenneth Mack, author of Representing the Race: The Creation of the Civil Rights Lawyer:
Paying careful attention to social and legal processes in urban and rural contexts, Threatening Property refutes the often-unexamined notion that the rise of de jure segregation unified whites and subordinated blacks. In this pathbreaking study, Herbin-Triant reveals a crucial avenue of research for scholars and points the way forward.

Eric Foner, Columbia University:
Herbin-Triant tackles a surprisingly neglected aspect of the Jim Crow era—efforts to impose residential segregation in urban and rural areas. Insightfully integrating considerations of race and class and probing how they intersected with the defense of property rights, she sheds new light on attempts to legally separate blacks and whites. An important contribution to southern and American history.