Event

Title: The 1976 Winter Olympics and the New Metropolitan Politics in the Rocky Mountain West

Professor Bryant Simon, Professor of History at Temple University, will serve as our discussant.

refreshments will be served

Abstract: The changes in metropolitan geography and political economy that transformed the United States after World War II also dramatically affected American politics at every level from the grassroots to the national. Individuals, institutions, and communities vied both for resources and for the power to determine how they would be distributed across metropolitan space and among competing metropolises. Out of this crucible emerged a new politics that emphasized pragmatism and self-interest over partisanship and ideology, confounding the conventional wisdom about America's conservative political trajectory from the 1970s onwards.. This struggle was most acute in the metropolitan Sunbelt South and West. In Denver, it came to a head in the controversy over the 1976 Winter Olympics, pitting urban minority rights and suburban "quality of life" activists against corporate boosters in a battle over whether to host the Games. The concerns animating Colorado voters stemmed from competing visions for the future of the metropolis that were rooted in local identities and that transcended right/left ideological bounds. This emerging politics of place shaped local engagements while providing citizens with a new vocabulary for politics at all level. It suggests a more complex, less partisan late-twentieth-century American politics than has yet been realized.