Dr. Frederick W. Gooding, Jr. is assistant professor of African American studies in the John V. Roach Honors College at Texas Christian University.
"Gooding argues that while the federal government did provide
thousands of jobs to Black workers--stretching from maintenance to
clerical to professional and leadership positions--the promise was
elusive and did not significantly improve economic prospects for
African Americans." --African American History
"American Dream Deferred is a pioneering work of scholarship about
one of the most significant struggles of the modern black freedom
movement, one that has been almost completely untold until now.
Frederick Gooding's vivid narrative about the long and difficult
struggle of African-Americans who worked in the federal government
reveals that more than laws and regulations were needed to gain
equality and respect. Only when black men and women in the nation's
capital organized for themselves did they gain the rights and
opportunities they had always deserved." --Michael Kazin,
Georgetown University
"American Dream Deferred presents a cogent analysis of the
persistence of racial inequities in the one institution commonly
considered the benchmark of meritocratic impartiality. It is also
an important meditation on the capacity of institutionalized racism
to limit upward mobility, inflict psychological damage, and quash
dreams of a better life."--Michael Dennis, Arcadia University
"[Gooding] focusing so closely on the relationship between US
presidents and Black federal workers . . . nicely synthesizes the
ways that each administration handled racial matters. An American
Dream Deferred makes a significant contribution to the growing
fields of Black Washington, Black federal employment, and economic
inequality after World War II." --The Journal of African American
History
"Contrary to the myth that black employees were welcomed in the
federal sector in the latter half of the 20th century, Frederick W.
Gooding, Jr.'s American Dream Deferred shows that the struggle for
equal treatment was just as steep in government workplaces as it
was in everyday life. . . . What Gooding, Jr. does well is examine
the tortoise pace of progress for black federal workers and how
that progress was thwarted at nearly every turn." --Historical
Novel Society
"Gooding...show[s] the degree of resistance black federal employees
faced in their new positions. . . .The American Dream of public
sector employees was deferred as they waged private battles for
dignity and respect, using the few legal and social mechanisms at
their disposal for grassroots change. Gooding posits, as he writes
in the introduction, that 'a "good government job" did not secure
freedom as much as it secured the fantasy of freedom.'" --B.F. Le
Beau, University of Saint Mary
"In this timely and critically important study, Frederick Gooding,
Jr.'s meticulous research illuminates the understudied history of
African American federal workers from World War II to the Reagan
era. With perceptive analysis, Gooding, Jr. explores not only the
causes and costs of systemic racism in the federal workplace, but
also the heroic efforts made by 'black collared' workers to uproot
it." --Margaret Rung, Roosevelt University
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