Margaret Garb is the author of Freedom’s Ballot: African American Political Struggles in Chicago from Abolition to the Great Migration.. She is working on a history of poverty and work in the U.S. from the Civil War to the Reagan era.
Culture
Judginess Built the Middle Class
A new book explores the 19th-century origins of middle-class respectability—and the misfits kept out of the club.
Margaret Garb
Culture
Squatters’ 60-Year War Against Private Property
How propertied classes team up with the state to forcibly evict urban squatters.
Margaret Garb
Culture
How Today’s White Middle Class Was Made Possible By Welfare
Whites, angered at blacks and immigrants receiving "government handouts," forget they were lifted out of poverty through racially exclusive welfare programs in the 30s.
Margaret Garb
Culture
The Problem With Cancer Memoirs
Popular accounts ignore the underlying race and class dynamics that determine vulnerability to the disease.
Margaret Garb
Culture
The Spooks Next Door
How suburbia emerged alongside America's covert foreign interventions.
Margaret Garb
Feature
A Poverty of Empathy
The GOP's social welfare philosophy dates back to 1818.
Margaret Garb
Culture
Deploying Urban Space
In Rebel Cities, David Harvey says places like Tahrir Square and Zuccotti Park are key tools for revolution.
Margaret Garb