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by Monica N. CampbellCheck out the guest post by Monica N. Campbell who participated in this year's Spring Academy at the Heidelberg Center for American Studies:  View of the Arkansas River and downtown Little Rock looking west from the Clinton Presidential Library, 2018, credit: Monica N. Campbell Between 1950 and1966, the majority of federally funded urban renewal projects in the UnitedStates were carried out in municipalities with populations of 50,000 or less,yet the influence that these cities had on national policy has been largelyoverlooked (DigitalScholarship Lab 2018). The literature onpost-World War II urban renewal highlights the ways in which policies meant toclear “slums” actually deepened inequality and gave downtowns a boost. However,existing work assumes that this federal program was most influenced bydecisions made by local elites in big cities. This project challenges thisemphasis by showing that one small city, Little Rock, arose as a pioneer inurban renewal by replacing urban ghettos with business centers and served as amodel for similar programs elsewhere. My research uses arich but neglected set of archival sources in Little Rock to chart theimplementation of wholly market and private sector based urban planningpolicies through the city’s Metroplan urban renewal program in the 1950s/60s. Iexamine how Little Rock’s urban renewal strategists adapted neoliberal policies– including the destruction of public housing, the public-private coalition ofcity government and private investors, and gentrification – decades before theyappeared in larger cities (see: Hackworth 2007; Harvey 2005; Hohle 2015; Jones2012; Pinson/Morel Journal 2017; Weaver 2016). I argue that, although on thenational periphery and controversial in the 1950s, Little Rock’s urban renewalpolicies helped redefine the center ground of American political economy twentyyears later. Close examination of this moment in urban history illustrates howsmaller cities served as laboratories for urban renewal plans that centeredaround business and pro-growth politics to revitalize city centers, rather thanescape them, together with state anti-labor policies that would inform theemergence of third-way liberalism in the 1970s. Exploring these aspects, notonly in Little Rock but on a regional and national level, highlights the roleof smaller cities in the postwar era. Image 2: Map of Little Rock, credit: Faigl.ladislav Little Rock is a particularly useful case study. In the summer of 1957, local city planners presented their answer to America’s mounting urban crisis to a national audience at the annual meeting of the American Planning and Civic Association in Little Rock. Inspired by examples of decaying business districts in “other cities,” and concerned about early signs of decay in Little Rock, local Housing Authority Executive Director Knox Banner developed the Central Little Rock Project (CLRP) as a preemptive renewal plan that emphasized market-based policies to fend off an urban crisis in Little Rock and make the central business district a bustling economic mecca by 1969 (see: National League of Cities/U.S. Conference of Mayors 1972; Sugrue 2005; Cohen 1996). Specifically, the CLRP emphasized the retention and return of white businesses and consumers in the central business district. This June 1957 model became the basis for urban renewal in Little Rock from that point on.The Central HighCrisis, which erupted that fall after Brownv. Board had mandated the desegregation of schools, momentarily stalledurban renewal and industrialization efforts in Little Rock. However, thoseinterested in urban renewal used the fallout from the racial crisis to promotetheir market-based plan to bolster the city center. Banner quickly moved topresent the CLRP to local business interests as the only available tool for buildinga new image for the city in the wake of the school crisis, and many localbusinessmen and bankers were keen to participate. Convinced that the CLRPprovided such an image, Little Rock’s Urban Progress Association and Metroplanjoined with the Housing Authority to provide “the institutional underpinning”for the project, and recruited ArkansasGazette reporter Jason Rouby, who would become executive director ofMetroplan in 1966, to direct the project’s promotional campaign. Additionally,thanks to the political maneuverings of the local elite, Little Rock and NorthLittle Rock both enjoyed the ascendance of strong, business-centered civicleadership in early 1958. Following his success in recruiting local businesssupport for the CLRP, Banner spent the next year lobbying in Washington D.C.The work on the ground in Little Rock and D.C. led to the amendment of nationallegislation in September 1959 to allow cities to develop urban renewal projectsthat included the entire commercial area of the central business district (NationalLeague of Cities/U.S. Conference of Mayors 1972). Little Rock was the firstcity to design and implement such a project. As such, Little Rock served as alaboratory where city planners could experiment with this new approach to urbanrenewal.Image 3: Downtown Little Rock, Arkansas, September 7, 1958, credit: Thomas J. O’Halloran,  photographerBy the 1960s,Little Rock emerged as a national example of successful downtown urban renewalfor cities throughout the country. Many cities sent delegates to examine LittleRock’s urban renewal programs first hand. The Little Rock Housing Authority(LRHA) also employed spokesmen like leading businessman Raymond Rebsamen topromote the Little Rock model elsewhere. During his public appearances,Rebsamen lauded the city’s urban renewal program as “a product of closeco-operation between all public agencies and private organizations” andinsisted that the city’s emphasis on urban renewal as public investment ratherthan public expense was key to the program’s success (Scherer 1961; Lausch2017). Additionally, Jason Rouby presentedon the CLRP in D.C. in December 1961 and accepted an invitation from the OmahaChamber of Commerce in May 1962 “to move to that city and initiate and manage aprogram of downtown urban renewal, metropolitan planning, and other activities”(National Urban League 1961; Rouby2000). In the meantime, Knox Banneraccepted a position as executive director of D.C.’s Downtown Progress where hebecame “the evangelist of delivery from urban decay” (The Washington Post1994).The CLRP was nothingshort of a physical manifestation of a national conversation that called forthe development of public-private partnerships in urban renewal. Importantly,these arguments, advanced by both private groups and federal housing officials,emphasized that urban renewal was “primarily a private enterprise operation […]facilitated by local government” (Follin 1955). Such arguments presented urbanrenewal implemented through public-private partnerships as essential for strengtheningcold war citizenship. This reasoning became an important element in PresidentsJohn F. Kennedy’s and Lyndon B. Johnson’s domestic policies, with Kennedytelling Congress in March 1961, “Increasingly, community development must be acooperative venture through the common goals of the metropolitan region as awhole. This requires the establishment of an effective and comprehensiveplanning process . . . embracing all major activities, both public and private,which shape the community” (Kennedy 1961). Three years later, HUD directorRobert C. Weaver declared such public-private partnerships a “key device”through which Americans could “forge the high quality of living for allcitizens which will be the hallmark of [Johnson’s] Great Society” (Weaver1964).This research projectis largely based in under-utilized archival collections, the most important ofwhich is the Metroplan Collection, held at the University of Arkansas at LittleRock Center for Arkansas History and Culture. These records open a whole newperspective on this issue that is not only about Arkansas, but about citiesacross the country. No one has used these records. My initial discoveriessuggest that doing so begs for a fundamental reevaluation of urban policy inpost-war America. In addition to examining the ways in which Little Rock’surban renewal policies in the 1950s helped redefine American political economyin the 1970s, my research explores grassroots opposition to these plans,particularly among labor and civil rights organizations. One of the keycollections for this part of my research is the records of Arkansas AFL-CIOleader Jerome B. Becker. During his tenure (1964-1996), Becker won keyvictories for Arkansas labor at the legislature and oversaw importantagreements between local labor unions, the state of Arkansas, and out-of-statecompanies. This newly available collection is an important source of previouslyunexplored materials concerning the work of labor in anti-union, right-to-workArkansas. At the same time, local chapters of the National Association for theAdvancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the National Urban League challengedurban renewal policies that did not equally benefit the African Americancommunity. Along with these newly available and little-used collections, I use more commonly utilized sources, like the Newsweek Atlanta Bureau records at Emory University, the Arkansas Council on Human Relations papers at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, the Department of Housing and Urban Development records at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland, and the National Urban League records at the Library of Congress in innovative ways. While other scholars have used, and continue to use, these sources to further our knowledge of the Civil Rights Movement, the centrality of suburbanization and grassroots mobilization in the rise of new conservativism, and intellectual analyses of neoliberalism, my project employs these sources in a new way to highlight the urban roots of neoliberalism (Aalbers 2017) by exploring the real-world application of neoliberal ideas in the postwar era.    References:Aalbers, Manuel B.2017. “The pre-histories of neoliberal urbanism in the United States.” In Debating the Neoliberal City edited byPinson &#38; Morel Journel, 96-118. New York: Routledge.Cohen, Lizabeth. 1996.“From Town Center to Shopping Center:The Reconfiguration of Community Marketplaces in Postwar America.” The American Historical Review 101, 4(Oct.): 1050-1081. ProQuest.DigitalScholarship Lab, “Renewing Inequality,”&#160;American Panorama, ed.Robert K. Nelson and Edward L. Ayers,accessed April 13, 2019, http://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/renewal/#view=0/0/1&#38;viz=cartogram&#38;text=about.Follin, James W.“Urban Renewal is Good for Your Business – And Good for Your Community.”November 9, 1955. Box 1:C13, Folder 3. National Urban League Records. Libraryof Congress.Hackworth, Jason.2013. The Neoliberal City: Governance,Ideology, and Development in American Urbanism. Ithaca: Cornell UniversityPress.Harvey, David. 2005.A Brief History of Neoliberalism.Oxford: Oxford University Press.Hohle, Randolph.2015. Race and the Origins of AmericanNeoliberalism. New York: Routledge.Jones, DanielStedman. 2012. Masters of the Universe:Hayek, Friedman, and the Birth of Neoliberal Politics. Princeton: PrincetonUniversity Press.Kennedy, John F.1961. “Text of the President’s Message to Congress on Housing.” New York Times. March 10, 1961, 2. BoxI:C1, Folder 4, National Urban League Records, 1900-1988, Library of Congress.“Knox Banner.” The Washington Post, April 15, 1994. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1994/04/15/knox-banner/e7874015-f9f8-45c5-8ca6-f7053207f41f/?noredirect=on&#38;utm_term=.3c082cdf512a.Lausch, ShannonMarie. “Metroplan.” The Encyclopedia ofArkansas History &#38; Culture, August 2, 2017. Accessed April 16, 2019, http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?search=1&#38;entryID=7994#.National League ofCities/United States Conference of Mayors. 1972. “Site Visit Report: LittleRock, Arkansas Economic Development Management Project.” April 1972. MetroplanCollection, University of Arkansas Little Rock Center for Arkansas History andCulture.Pinson, Gilles &#38; Christelle Morel Journel, eds. 2017. Debating the NeoliberalCity. New York: Routledge.“Report: Meetingof Local Group Associations of ACTION, INC. Washington, D.C. – Dec. 11 &#38;12, 1961.” Box 1:C1, Folder 5. National Urban League Records. Library ofCongress.Rouby, Jason.2000. Interview by Jerry McConnell. ArkansasGazette Project, The David and Barbara Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral andVisual History, December 22, 2000. Transcript,3. http://pryorcenter.uark.edu/project.php?thisProject=2.Scherer, Leo. 1961. “Put on Citywide Basis,Renewal Called Good Business,” TheLincoln Star, November 1961, 17.Sugrue, Thomas J.2005. The Origins of the Urban Crisis:Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit. Princeton: Princeton UniversityPress.Weaver, Robert C.1964. “Draft Material for State of the Union Address.” 1964, 2. Central FilesSubject Correspondence 1964; Central Subject Correspondence Files, 1961-1965;Record Group 207: General Records of the Department of Housing and UrbanDevelopment, 1931-2003, Record Group 207; National Archives at College Park,MD.Weaver, TimothyP.R. 2016. Blazing the Neoliberal Trail:Political Development in the United States and the United Kingdom.Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Image2: Map of Little Rock, credit:Faigl.ladislavImage 3: Downtown Little Rock, Arkansas, September 7, 1958, credit: Thomas J. O’Halloran, photographerImage 4: Map of urban renewal projects in Little Rock with statistics showing family displacements between 1950 and 1966, credit: Digital Scholarship Lab, “Renewing Inequality,”&#160;American Panorama, ed. Robert K. Nelson and Edward L. Ayers. (Screenshot by the author).  About the AuthorMonica N. Campbellis a PhD candidate in History at the University of Mississippi. She received herB.A. in History from the University of Central Arkansas (2010) and her B.A. inSociology (2013) and M.A. in Public History (2015) from Arkansas StateUniversity in Jonesboro. Her research focuses on mid-twentieth-century Americanurbanization, specifically the role of small cities in shaping national urbanrenewal policy. 