Fresh Air Children and The Problem of Race in America

Since 1877 and to this day, Fresh Air programs from Maine to Montana have brought inner-city children to rural and suburban homes for two-week summer vacations. Opening a new chapter in the history of race in the United States, Professor Shearer will show how the actions of hundreds of thousands of rural and suburban residents who hosted children from the city perpetuated racial inequity rather than overturned it. Covering the racially transformative years between 1939 and 1979, Shearer will show how the rhetoric of innocence employed by Fresh Air boosters largely served the interests of religiously minded white hosts and did little to offer more than a vacation for African American and Latino urban youth.