June Manning Thomas

Born and raised in South Carolina during the Jim Crow years, June Manning Thomas left SC to attend college at Mich. State University (MSU). She chose urban planning as a field in part because of her happy memories of finding relief from Jim Crow accommodations in big cities such as Miami and Atlanta. She has taught at MSU, Cleveland State University, and University of Michigan (UM), and was eventually named the Mary Frances Berry Distinguished University Professor Emerita of Urban Planning, UM. Her books and articles have studied spirituality and planning, racial inequities in urban planning, and the civil rights movement in South Carolina. Her books include Planning Progress: Lessons from Shoghi Effendi; the co-edited Urban Planning and the African American Community; Redevelopment and Race: Planning a Finer City in Postwar Detroit; and the co-edited The City after Abandonment (2013). The latest is Struggling to Learn: An Intimate History of School Desegregation in South Carolina (Univ. of S. Carolina Press, March, 2022).