Battle for Bed-Stuy
Title | Battle for Bed-Stuy PDF eBook |
Author | Michael Woodsworth |
Publisher | Harvard University Press |
Pages | 425 |
Release | 2016-06-06 |
Genre | Business & Economics |
ISBN | 0674545060 |
In the 1960s Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood was labeled America’s largest ghetto. But its brownstones housed a coterie of black professionals intent on bringing order and hope to the community. In telling their story Michael Woodsworth reinterprets the War on Poverty by revealing its roots in local activism and policy experiments.
Brownsville, Brooklyn
Title | Brownsville, Brooklyn PDF eBook |
Author | Wendell E. Pritchett |
Publisher | University of Chicago Press |
Pages | 346 |
Release | 2002-02-15 |
Genre | Business & Economics |
ISBN | 0226684466 |
From its founding in the late 1800s through the 1950s, Brownsville, a section of eastern Brooklyn, was a white, predominantly Jewish, working-class neighborhood. The famous New York district nurtured the aspirations of thousands of upwardly mobile Americans while the infamous gangsters of Murder, Incorporated controlled its streets. But during the 1960s, Brownsville was stigmatized as a black and Latino ghetto, a neighborhood with one of the city's highest crime rates. Home to the largest concentration of public housing units in the city, Brownsville came to be viewed as emblematic of urban decline. And yet, at the same time, the neighborhood still supported a wide variety of grass-roots movements for social change. The story of these two different, but in many ways similar, Brownsvilles is compellingly told in this probing new work. Focusing on the interaction of Brownsville residents with New York's political and institutional elites, Wendell Pritchett shows how the profound economic and social changes of post-World War II America affected the area. He covers a number of pivotal episodes in Brownsville's history as well: the rise and fall of interracial organizations, the struggles to deal with deteriorating housing, and the battles over local schools that culminated in the famous 1968 Teachers Strike. Far from just a cautionary tale of failed policies and institutional neglect, the story of Brownsville's transformation, he finds, is one of mutual struggle and frustrated cooperation among whites, blacks, and Latinos. Ultimately, Brownsville, Brooklyn reminds us how working-class neighborhoods have played, and continue to play, a central role in American history. It is a story that needs to be read by all those concerned with the many challenges facing America's cities today.
Taming Manhattan
Title | Taming Manhattan PDF eBook |
Author | Catherine McNeur |
Publisher | Harvard University Press |
Pages | 321 |
Release | 2014-11-03 |
Genre | Architecture |
ISBN | 0674725093 |
George Perkins Marsh Prize, American Society for Environmental History VSNY Book Award, New York Metropolitan Chapter of the Victorian Society in America Hornblower Award for a First Book, New York Society Library James Broussard Best First Book Prize, Society for Historians of the Early American Republic With pigs roaming the streets and cows foraging in the Battery, antebellum Manhattan would have been unrecognizable to inhabitants of today’s sprawling metropolis. Fruits and vegetables came from small market gardens in the city, and manure piled high on streets and docks was gold to nearby farmers. But as Catherine McNeur reveals in this environmental history of Gotham, a battle to control the boundaries between city and country was already being waged, and the winners would take dramatic steps to outlaw New York’s wild side. “[A] fine book which make[s] a real contribution to urban biography.” —Joseph Rykwert, Times Literary Supplement “Tells an odd story in lively prose...The city McNeur depicts in Taming Manhattan is the pestiferous obverse of the belle epoque city of Henry James and Edith Wharton that sits comfortably in many imaginations...[Taming Manhattan] is a smart book that engages in the old fashioned business of trying to harvest lessons for the present from the past.” —Alexander Nazaryan, New York Times
Forging Freedom
Title | Forging Freedom PDF eBook |
Author | Gary B. Nash |
Publisher | Harvard University Press |
Pages | 372 |
Release | 1988 |
Genre | African Americans |
ISBN | 9780674309333 |
This book is the first to trace the fortunes of the earliest large free black community in the U.S. Nash shows how black Philadelphians struggled to shape a family life, gain occupational competence, organize churches, establish social networks, advance cultural institutions, educate their children, and train leaders who would help abolish slavery.
Halsey Street
Title | Halsey Street PDF eBook |
Author | Naima Coster |
Publisher | Platinum Spotlight Series |
Pages | 0 |
Release | 2018 |
Genre | Fiction |
ISBN | 9781683248439 |
"After her mother, Mirella, abandoned her family to reclaim her roots in the Dominican Republic, Penelope Grand moved back to Brooklyn to keep an eye on her ailing father. When she receives a postcard from Mirella seeking reconciliation, old wounds are reopened, secrets revealed, and a journey across an ocean of sacrifice and self-discovery begins"--
Justice Rising
Title | Justice Rising PDF eBook |
Author | Patricia Sullivan |
Publisher | Harvard University Press |
Pages | 561 |
Release | 2021-06-08 |
Genre | Biography & Autobiography |
ISBN | 0674737458 |
A leading civil rights historian places Robert Kennedy for the first time at the center of the movement for racial justice of the 1960sÑand shows how many of todayÕs issues can be traced back to that pivotal time. History, race, and politics converged in the 1960s in ways that indelibly changed America. In Justice Rising, a landmark reconsideration of Robert KennedyÕs life and legacy, Patricia Sullivan draws on government files, personal papers, and oral interviews to reveal how he grasped the moment to emerge as a transformational leader. When protests broke out across the South, the young attorney general confronted escalating demands for racial justice. What began as a political problem soon became a moral one. In the face of vehement pushback from Southern Democrats bent on massive resistance, he put the weight of the federal government behind school desegregation and voter registration. Bobby KennedyÕs youthful energy, moral vision, and capacity to lead created a momentum for change. He helped shape the 1964 Civil Rights Act but knew no law would end racism. When the Watts uprising brought calls for more aggressive policing, he pushed back, pointing to the root causes of urban unrest: entrenched poverty, substandard schools, and few job opportunities. RFK strongly opposed the military buildup in Vietnam, but nothing was more important to him than Òthe revolution within our gates, the struggle of the American Negro for full equality and full freedom.Ó On the night of Martin Luther KingÕs assassination, KennedyÕs anguished appeal captured the hopes of a turbulent decade: ÒIn this difficult time for the United States it is perhaps well to ask what kind of nation we are and what direction we want to move in.Ó It is a question that remains urgent and unanswered.
Black Prisoner of War
Title | Black Prisoner of War PDF eBook |
Author | James A. Daly |
Publisher | |
Pages | 320 |
Release | 2000 |
Genre | Biography & Autobiography |
ISBN |
Among the few autobiographical works about Vietnam by a black author, this memoir by Daly (1946-98), a Jehovah's Witness who renounced the US position after five years in the infamous "Hanoi Hilton," controversially explores race relations and the less than courageous. The introduction provides context. Originally published by Bobbs-Merrill as A Hero's Welcome. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR