Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-wq484 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T02:33:39.765Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Ending Discrimination, Legitimating Debt: The Political Economy of Race, Gender, and Credit Access in the 1960s and 1970s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 February 2015

Extract

Today, in the aftermath of the subprime crisis, there is a foreboding sense that it is too easy for Americans to borrow. Living beyond our means on our cards and our mortgages, Americans borrowed at an unsustainable pace, and what put us here, the logic goes, was the unfortunate collision of lenders' greed and borrower's cupidity. Yet free-for-all borrowing defined another moment's economy as well, but without the ill consequences: the postwar period. After World War II, cheap credit underpinned the suburban prosperity, through government-insured loans, auto financing, and even department store Charga-Plates.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2011. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Business History Conference. All rights reserved.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bibliography of Works Cited

Books

Hooks, Bell. Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center. Boston: South End Press, 1984.Google Scholar
Caplovitz, David. The Poor Pay More: Consumer Practices of Low-Income Families, 1967 edition. New York. Free Press, 1967.Google Scholar
Lizabeth, Cohen. A Consumers’ Republic. New York: Random House, 2004.Google Scholar
Douglas, Paul H. In the Fullness of Time: The Memoirs of Paul H. Douglas. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972.Google Scholar
Hyman, Louis. Debtor Nation: The History of America in Red Ink. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Stephen, A Marglin, and Schor, Juliet. The Golden Age of Capitalism: Reinterpreting the Postwar Experience, Studies in Development Economics. New York: Clarendon Press, 1990.Google Scholar
Sugrue, Thomas. The Origins of the Urban Crisis, Princeton Studies in American Politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996.Google Scholar
U.S. Kerner Commission. Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, New York Times reprint. New York: Bantam Books, 1968.Google Scholar

Magazines and Newspapers

Washington Post.Google Scholar

Archival Sources

Baker Library. Historical Collections. Allston, MA: Harvard University, (BAK).Google Scholar
Historic Corporate Reports.Google Scholar
Old Class Collection.Google Scholar
National Archives. College Park, MD (NARA).Google Scholar
National Commission on Consumer Finance.Google Scholar
National Organization for Women.Google Scholar
Schlesinger Library. Historical Collections. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University (NOW).Google Scholar

Congressional Records

Congress, Senate. Committee on Banking and Currency, Subcommittee on Financial Institutions, “Consumer Credit and the Poor.” 90th Congress, 2nd session, April 19, 1968.Google Scholar
Congress, Senate. Committee on Banking and Currency, Subcommittee on Financial Institutions, “Fair Credit Reporting Act.” 91st Congress, 1st sesssion, May 19-23, 1969.Google Scholar
Congress, House. Committee on Banking, Currency, and Housing, Subcommittee on Consumer Affairs, “To Amend the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974.” 94th Congress, 1st sesssion, April 2223, 1975.Google Scholar
Congress, Senate. Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, Subcommittee on Consumer Affairs, “Credit Card Redlining.” June 45, 1979.Google Scholar