2022 Reed Fink Award Presentation

Labor and Planning in Midcentury Alabama

Presented by

Malcolm Cammeron​
Ph.D. Candidate​
Corcoran Department of History​
University of Virginia​​

About this presentation:

Dozens of large cities and small towns in Alabama turned to professional planners for assistance after World War II. Such planning efforts attempted to ameliorate the lack of development made during the depths of the Great Depression and WWII in a region New Dealers had derided as “the nation's number one economic problem.” Such development also attempted to attract and respond to industry and accommodate a growing diaspora of Black and white rural southerners. This discussion will broadly explore southern planning at midcentury and the role of labor in planning decisions through the lens of northeast Alabama. 

Biography

Malcolm Cammeron is a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate in History at the University of Virginia and a Carter G. Woodson Predoctoral Fellow in the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American and African Studies at the University of Virginia. His research examines the intersections of urban-environmental inequalities and the modern Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. South. He received a B.S. in Marketing from the University of Alabama, where he graduated with honors, and an M.A. in History from the University of Virginia.