Building the South Side explores the struggle for influence that dominated the planning and development of Chicago's South Side during the Progressive Era. Robin F. Bachin examines the early days of the University of Chicago, Chicago's public parks, Comiskey Park, and the Black Belt to consider how community leaders looked to the physical design of the city to shape its culture and promote civic interaction. Bachin highlights how the creation of a local terrain of civic culture was a contested process, with the battle for cultural authority transforming urban politics and blurring...
Building the South Side explores the struggle for influence that dominated the planning and development of Chicago's South Side during the Prog...
In "Selling the Race," Adam Green tells the story of how black Chicagoans were at the center of a national movement in the 1940s and 50s, a time when African Americans across the country first started to see themselves as part of a single culture. Along the way, he offers fascinating reinterpretations of such events as the 1940 American Negro Exposition, the rise of black music and the culture industry that emerged around it, the development of the Associated Negro Press and the founding of Johnson Publishing, and the outcry over the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till.
By presenting African...
In "Selling the Race," Adam Green tells the story of how black Chicagoans were at the center of a national movement in the 1940s and 50s, a time wh...
In recent years, federal mandates in education have become the subject of increasing debate. Adam R. Nelson's "The Elusive Ideal" a postwar history of federal involvement in the Boston public schools provides lessons from the past that shed light on the continuing struggles of urban public schools today. This far-reaching analysis examines the persistent failure of educational policy at local, state, and federal levels to equalize educational opportunity for all. Exploring deep-seated tensions between the educational ideals of integration, inclusion, and academic achievement over time, Nelson...
In recent years, federal mandates in education have become the subject of increasing debate. Adam R. Nelson's "The Elusive Ideal" a postwar history of...
In the 1920s, thousands of white migrants settled in the Los Angeles suburb of South Gate. Six miles from downtown and adjacent to Watts, South Gate and its neighboring communities served as L.A.'s Detroit, an industrial belt for mass production of cars, tires, steel, and other durable goods. Blue-collar workers built the suburb literally from the ground up, using sweat equity rather than cash to construct their own homes. As Becky M. Nicolaides shows in "My Blue Heaven," this ethic of self-reliance and homeownership formed the core of South Gate's identity. With post-World War II...
In the 1920s, thousands of white migrants settled in the Los Angeles suburb of South Gate. Six miles from downtown and adjacent to Watts, South Gate a...
By the end of the 1920s, just ten years after the Jones Act first made them full-fledged Americans, more than 45,000 native Puerto Ricans had left their homes and entered the United States, citizenship papers in hand, forming one of New York City s most complex and distinctive migrant communities. In "Puerto Rican Citizen," Lorrin Thomas for the first time unravels the many tensions historical, racial, political, and economic that defined the experience of this group of American citizens before and after World War II.
Building its incisive narrative from a wide range of archival...
By the end of the 1920s, just ten years after the Jones Act first made them full-fledged Americans, more than 45,000 native Puerto Ricans had left the...
"The Transatlantic Collapse of Urban Renewal "examines how postwar thinkers from both sides of the Atlantic considered urban landscapes radically changed by the political and physical realities of sprawl, urban decay, and urban renewal. With a sweep that encompasses New York, London, Berlin, Philadelphia, and Toronto, among others, Christopher Klemek traces changing responses to the challenging issues that most affected the lives of the world s cities. In the postwar decades, the principles of modernist planning came to be challenged in the grassroots revolts against the building of...
"The Transatlantic Collapse of Urban Renewal "examines how postwar thinkers from both sides of the Atlantic considered urban landscapes radically c...
When we think of segregation, what often comes to mind is apartheid South Africa, or the American South in the age of Jim Crow--two societies fundamentally premised on the concept of the separation of the races. But as Carl H. Nightingale shows us in this magisterial history, segregation is everywhere, deforming cities and societies worldwide.
Starting with segregation's ancient roots, and what the archaeological evidence reveals about humanity's long-standing use of urban divisions to reinforce political and economic inequality, Nightingale then moves to the world of European...
When we think of segregation, what often comes to mind is apartheid South Africa, or the American South in the age of Jim Crow--two societies funda...
Before Franklin Roosevelt declared December 7 to be a "date which will live in infamy"; before American soldiers landed on D-Day; before the B-17s, B-24s, and B-29s roared over Europe and Asia, there was Willow Run. Located twenty-five miles west of Detroit, the bomber plant at Willow Run and the community that grew up around it attracted tens of thousands of workers from across the United States during World War II. Together, they helped build the nation's "Arsenal of Democracy," but Willow Run also became the site of repeated political conflicts over how to build suburbia while mobilizing...
Before Franklin Roosevelt declared December 7 to be a "date which will live in infamy"; before American soldiers landed on D-Day; before the B-17s, B-...
Glossy magazines write about them, celebrities give their names to them, and you'd better believe there's an app (or ten) committed to finding you the right one. They are New York City restaurants and food shops. And their journey to international notoriety is a captivating one. The now-booming food capital was once a small seaport city, home to a mere six municipal food markets that were stocked by farmers, fishermen, and hunters who lived in the area. By 1890, however, the city's population had grown to more than one million, and residents could dine in thousands of restaurants with a...
Glossy magazines write about them, celebrities give their names to them, and you'd better believe there's an app (or ten) committed to finding you the...
The term "community organizer" was deployed repeatedly against Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign as a way to paint him as an inexperienced politician unfit for the presidency. The implication was that the job of a community organizer wasn't a serious one, and that it certainly wasn't on the list of credentials needed for a presidential resume. In reality, community organizers have played key roles in the political lives of American cities for decades, perhaps never more so than during the 1970s in Chicago, where African Americans laid the groundwork for further empowerment as...
The term "community organizer" was deployed repeatedly against Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign as a way to paint him as an inexperi...
