“Citizen Brown is an important contribution to the literatures on segregation, suburbanization, and local politics. Gordon creates a compelling and well-documented account of the ways in which local governments first refuse to provide services to certain neighborhoods and then use that lack of services as evidence of blight and grounds for slum clearance. He then offers an excellent, structural explanation for Michael Brown’s murder that is linked to this same connection between public services and local policy.”

Jessica Trounstine, author of Segregation by Design

“Citizen Brown arrives at a propitious moment, when many Americans are still trying to make sense of how and why one of the most explosive incidents in American race relations—the 2014 killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri—occurred not in a center city, where so many of the nation’s best-known racial dramas have played out over the last fifty years, but in a suburb. What Gordon accomplishes here is a much needed, much deeper understanding of what happened there, even when Ferguson isn’t front and center. Citizen Brown is a pioneering foray into a larger, more complicated consideration of the recent history of race relations in American suburbs.”

Mark Krasovic, author of The Newark Frontier

"This innovative study is informed by the deep understanding of legal processes and familiarity with St. Louis’s unique geography that Gordon showed in his previous book Mapping Decline: St. Louis and the Fate of the American City (2008). Citizen Brown also benefits from being grounded in political theory about citizenship and its many meanings."

Missouri Historical Review

"Citizen Brown provides an important look at how local municipalities can implement a de facto two-tiered system of local citizenship based on racial grounds. . . . I highly recommend the book to anyone who is interested in gaining a better understanding of how racial inequalities can be engrained in local societies."

EH.Net