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"The Colored Problem:" Milwaukee's White Protestant Churches Respond To The Second Great Migration, Peter Borg

Dissertations (1934 -)

In 1963 Dr. King observed that America was most segregated on Sunday mornings when its churches were filled with worshippers. My dissertation investigates the response of Milwaukee’s white urban Protestant churches to the Second Great Migration, which led to tremendous growth in the city’s African American population. The difficulty caused by many white members living in the suburbs while still attending church in racially transitioning city neighborhoods was compounded in some cases by the negative influence exerted by denominational history and polity. While those realities were often far more significant than theology in determining how individual congregations reacted to the …