Cities, Mayors, and Race Relations analyzes the politics behind improving race relations in local communities through the use of mayoral task forces. By investigating three communities with unique cultural, social, economic, and racial characteristics, author Richard T. Middleton IV provides insight into why some communities are more likely to realize success in influencing policy makers to adopt policy innovations aimed at improving race relations than are others. This book chronicles how political culture, level of racial threat, factors central to task force formation, and staffing affect the likelihood that mayoral leadership and use of government organized nongovernmental organizations will persuade local level actors to adopt policies aimed at improving race relations. To study this phenomenon, Cities, Mayors, and Race Relations focuses on three cities: Madison, Wisconsin, Columbia, Missouri, and Kansas City, Missouri.

Recent years have seen an increase in the number of African Americans elected to political office in cities where the majority of their constituents are not black. In the past, the leadership of black politicians was characterized as either "deracialized" or "racialized"--that is, as either focusing on politics that transcend race or as making black issues central to their agenda. Today many African American politicians elected to offices in non-majority-black cities are adopting a strategy that universalizes black interests as intrinsically relevant to the needs of their entire constituency. In Black Mayors, White Majorities Ravi K. Perry explores the conditions in which black mayors of majority-white cities are able to represent black interests and whether blacks' historically high expectations for black mayors are being realized. Perry uses Toledo and Dayton, Ohio, as case studies, and his analysis draws on interviews with mayors and other city officials, business leaders, and heads of civic organizations, in addition to official city and campaign documents and newspapers. Perry also analyzes mayoral speeches, the 2001 ward-level election results, and city demographics. Black Mayors, White Majorities encourages readers to think beyond the black-white dyad and instead to envision policies that can serve constituencies with the greatest needs as well as the general public.

In Confronting the Color Line, Alan Anderson and George Pickering examine the hopes and strategies, the frustrations and internal conflicts, the hard-won successes and bitter disappointments of the civil rights movement in Chicago. The scene of a protracted local struggle to force equality in education and open housing for blacks, the city also became the focus of national attention in the summer of 1966 as Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference challenged the entrenched political machine of Mayor Richard J. Daley. The failure of King's campaign--a failure he would not live to redeem--marked the final unsuccessful attempt to secure significant social change in Chicago, and soon afterward the national civil rights movement itself would unravel amid white backlash and cries of black power. Picking up the threads of our own recent history, Confronting the Color Line examines a political movement that remains unfinished, a dilemma for America's system of democratic social change that remains unsolved.

This fascinating book examines the 1990s rise of a new black ghetto in rust belt America, 'the global ghetto'. It uses the emergent perspective of 'racial economy' to delineate a fundamental proposition; historically neglected and marginalized black ghettos, in a 1990s era of societal boom and bust, have become more impoverished, more stigmatized, and functionally ambiguous as areas. As these ghettos grow in size and become more stigmatized entities in contemporary society, our understanding of them in relation to evolving cities and society has not kept pace. This book looks to the heart of this misunderstanding, to find out how race and political economy in cities dynamically connect in new ways ('racial economy') to deepen deprivation in these areas. This book is an essential read for students of geography, urban studies and sociology.

The milestones for blacks in twentieth-century America—the Harlem Renaissance, the struggle for equal education, and the civil rights movement—would have been inconceivable without the contributions of one important but often overlooked figure, Charles S. Johnson (1893–1956). This compelling biography demonstrates the scope of his achievements, situates him among other black intellectuals of his time, and casts new light on a pivotal era in the struggle for black equality in America. An impresario of Harlem Renaissance culture, an eminent Chicago-trained sociologist, a pioneering race relations leader, and an educator of the generation that freed itself from legalized segregation, Johnson was a visionary who linked the everyday struggles of blacks with the larger intellectual and political currents of the day. His distinguished career included twenty-eight years at Fisk University, where he established the famed Race Relations Institute and became Fisk's first black president.

During the 1950s, amid increased attention to the problems facing cities—such as racial disparities in housing, education, and economic conditions; tense community-police relations; and underrepresentation of minority groups—local governments developed an interest in “human relations.” In the wake of the shocking 1965 Watts uprising, a new authority was created: the Los Angeles City Human Relations Commission. Today, such commissions exist all over the United States, charged with addressing such tasks as fighting racial discrimination and improving fair housing access. Brian Calfano and Valerie Martinez-Ebers examine the history and current efforts of human relations commissions in promoting positive intergroup outcomes and enforcing antidiscrimination laws. Drawing on a wide range of theories and methods from political science, social psychology, and public administration, they assess policy approaches, successes, and failures in four cities. The book sheds light on the advantages and disadvantages of different commission types and considers the stresses and expectations placed on commission staff in carrying out difficult agendas in highly charged political contexts. Calfano and Martinez-Ebers suggest that the path to full inclusion is fraught with complications but that human rights commissions provide guidance as to how disparate groups can be brought together to forge a common purpose. The first book to examine these widely occurring yet understudied political bodies, Human Relations Commissions is relevant to a range of urban policy issues of interest to both academics and practitioners.

The story of Madeline Morgan, the activist educator who brought Black history to one of the nation’s largest and most segregated school systems A Worthy Piece of Work tells the story of Madeline Morgan (later Madeline Stratton Morris), a teacher and an activist in WWII-era Chicago, who fought her own battle on the home front, authoring curricula that bolstered Black claims for recognition and equal citizenship. During the Second World War, as Black Americans both fought to save democracy abroad and demanded full citizenship at home, Morgan’s work gained national attention and widespread praise, and became a model for teachers, schools, districts, and cities across the country. Scholar Michael Hines unveils this history for the first time, providing a rich understanding of the ways in which Black educators have created counternarratives to challenge the anti-Black racism found in school textbooks and curricula. At a moment when Black history is under attack in school districts and state legislatures across the country, A Worthy Piece of Work reminds us that struggles over history, representation, and race are far from a new phenomenon.