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The
Politics of Public Housing
Black Women's Struggles Against Urban Inequality
By
Rhonda Y. Williams
Rhonda Y. Williams appearing at
Enoch Pratt Free Library
Central Library/ Wheeler
Auditorium / 400 Cathedral Street /
Sunday, February 6, 2005
Part urban history, part
collective biography,
The
Politics of Public Housing weaves
nearly 70 years of Baltimore’s public housing past with
personal accounts of the war on poverty from those who not only
fought it but who lived it daily. It provides an absorbing and
intimate portrait of the black women who called the projects
their home and fought to keep them that way.
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Product Details —
320 pages; 21
halftones & line illus.; 6-1/8
x 9-1/4; 0-19-515890-3
Dr.
Rhonda Y. Williams is
Associate Professor of Women's Studies and History at Case Western
Reserve University. A Baltimore native, she received her Ph.D. from the
University of Pennsylvania. |
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Reviews
Black women have
traditionally represented the canvas on which many debates about
poverty and welfare have been drawn. For a quarter century after
the publication of the notorious Moynihan report, poor black
women were tarred with the same brush: "ghetto moms"
or "welfare queens" living off the state, with little
ambition or hope of an independent future. At the same time, the
history of the civil rights movement has all too often succumbed
to an idolatry that stresses the centrality of prominent leaders
while overlooking those who fought daily for their survival in
an often hostile urban landscape.
In this collective biography, Rhonda Y. Williams takes us
behind, and beyond, politically expedient labels to provide an
incisive and intimate portrait of poor black women in urban
America. Drawing on dozens of interviews, Williams challenges
the notion that low-income housing was a resounding failure that
doomed three consecutive generations of post-war Americans to
entrenched poverty. Instead, she recovers a history of
grass-roots activism, of political awakening, and of class
mobility, all facilitated by the creation of affordable public
housing.
The stereotyping
of black women, especially mothers, has obscured a complicated
and nuanced reality too often warped by the political agendas of
both the left and the right, and has prevented an accurate
understanding of the successes and failures of government
anti-poverty policy.
At long last giving human form to a community of women who have
too often been treated as faceless pawns in policy debates,
Rhonda Y. Williams offers an unusually balanced and personal
account of the urban war on poverty from the perspective of
those who fought, and lived, it daily.—
Publisher, Oxford University Press
There are far too
few books from the perspective of poor black women, even fewer
that give them the credit they deserve for pushing local, state,
and federal governments to fulfill the promises of the New Deal
and the War on Poverty. Rhonda William’s beautifully written
and sweeping narrative makes fresh and important contributions
to urban history, African-American women’s history, and the
history of poverty policy in this country.—Annelise
Orleck, author of Common Sense & a Little Fire
A remarkable piece
of work, doing for Baltimore what Making the second Ghetto did
for Chicago. Williams brings welcome new light to bear on the
struggle of poor black women for respectability and inclusion,
inclusion on their terms. Drawing on a rich data set covering
forty years, Williams renders vivid portraits of individuals
while also conveying a clear conception of the changing societal
trends and public policies with which they had to contend.—Charles
Payne, author of I’ve Got the Light of Freedom
An innovative
study of the history of the activist work of low-income black
women. Deeply researched and eloquently rendered, this book
provides a new model for understanding urban political
history—not from the bottom up, but from the inside out.—Barbara
Dianne Savage, author of Broadcasting Freedom
The
Politics of Public Housing presents a new face and place of civil rights struggle—poor
women in the Baltimore “projects”
and their mobilization for adequate housing income, education,
and dignity. Rhonda Williams has written an illuminating and
provocative study of black women who waged their own war on
poverty in the 1950s and 1960s.—Evelyn
Brooks Higginbotham, author of Righteous Discontent
Moving from the New
Deal and World War II through the War on Poverty and the new
social movements of the 1970s,
The
Politics of Public Housing
illuminates the grassroots activism of poor black women for
decent shelter and adequate income in fresh and surprising ways.
After Williams, scholars will have to consider housing as a
major domain of the welfare state. Hers is a most important
study.—Eileen Boris, editor (with
Nupur Chaudhuri) of Voices of Women Historians
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The Black Power Movement
Rethinking the Civil Rights-Black Power Era
Edited by
Peniel E. Joseph
The Black Power Movement: Rethinking the Civil Rights-Black
Power Era is a bold new look at the Black Power
Movement, a social movement during the 1960s that re-defined
black identity. The essays in this collection argue that
the Black Power Movement and the Civil Rights Movement grew
out of the same postwar political climate that galvanized
many types of civil rights activists. With essays that
reconsider the roots of the 1965 Watts uprising, the
formation of the Black Panther Party, and the “rainbow
radicalism” that inspired ethnic minorities to celebrate
their ethnic consciousness, among other topics, these
powerful collected works look at the era of the Black Power
Movement with fresh eyes.
Contributors:
Peniel E. Joseph,
Keith Mayes, Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, Kimberly Springer, Jeanne
Theoharis, Stephen Ward, Simon Wendt,
Rhonda Y. Williams,
Yohuru Williams, Komozi Woodard |
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Panther Baby
A Life of Rebellion and Reinvention
By Jamal Joseph
In the 1960s he exhorted students at Columbia University to burn their college to the ground. Today he’s chair of their School of the Arts film division. Jamal Joseph’s personal odyssey—from the streets of Harlem to Riker’s Island and Leavenworth to the halls of Columbia—is as gripping as it is inspiring. Eddie Joseph was a high school honor student, slated to graduate early and begin college. But this was the late 1960s in Bronx’s black ghetto, and fifteen-year-old Eddie was introduced to the tenets of the Black Panther Party, which was just gaining a national foothold. By sixteen, his devotion to the cause landed him in prison on the infamous Rikers Island—charged with conspiracy as one of the Panther 21 in one of the most emblematic criminal cases of the sixties. When exonerated, Eddie—now called Jamal—became the youngest spokesperson and leader of the Panthers’ New York chapter. He joined the “revolutionary underground,” later landing back in prison. Sentenced to more than twelve years in Leavenworth, he earned three degrees there and found a new calling. He is now chair of Columbia University’s School of the Arts film division. . . . In raw, powerful prose, Jamal Joseph helps us understand what it meant to be a soldier inside the militant Black Panther movement. . . . |
His shooting death at a Macon
County service station became a rallying point for opponents of racial
inequality during the late 1960s. Despite the demonstrations, Segrest
was not indicted for Younge's murder until November 1966 and was found
innocent by an all-white jury the following month. Younge's death also
spurred action from SNCC, which called a press conference on January 6,
1966, to declare its opposition to the war in Vietnam, the first
statement of its kind by a civil rights organization. Younge's death was
highlighted at the press conference as an example of the hypocrisy of
fighting for freedom abroad while rights were denied in the United
States and was used as a call for people to refuse the draft and work
for freedom at home instead.—Encyclopedia
of Alabama
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