Saving the Neighborhood

Saving the Neighborhood PDF Author: Richard R. W. Brooks
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674073711
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 389

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Book Description
Saving the Neighborhood tells the charged, still controversial story of the rise and fall of racially restrictive covenants in America, and offers rare insight into the ways legal and social norms reinforce one another, acting with pernicious efficacy to codify and perpetuate intolerance. The early 1900s saw an unprecedented migration of African Americans leaving the rural South in search of better work and equal citizenship. In reaction, many white communities instituted property agreements—covenants—designed to limit ownership and residency according to race. Restrictive covenants quickly became a powerful legal guarantor of segregation, their authority facing serious challenge only in 1948, when the Supreme Court declared them legally unenforceable in Shelley v. Kraemer. Although the ruling was a shock to courts that had upheld covenants for decades, it failed to end their influence. In this incisive study, Richard Brooks and Carol Rose unpack why. At root, covenants were social signals. Their greatest use lay in reassuring the white residents that they shared the same goal, while sending a warning to would-be minority entrants: keep out. The authors uncover how loosely knit urban and suburban communities, fearing ethnic mixing or even “tipping,” were fair game to a new class of entrepreneurs who catered to their fears while exacerbating the message encoded in covenants: that black residents threatened white property values. Legal racial covenants expressed and bestowed an aura of legitimacy upon the wish of many white neighborhoods to exclude minorities. Sadly for American race relations, their legacy still lingers.

Saving the Neighborhood

Saving the Neighborhood PDF Author: Richard R. W. Brooks
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674073711
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 389

Get Book Here

Book Description
Saving the Neighborhood tells the charged, still controversial story of the rise and fall of racially restrictive covenants in America, and offers rare insight into the ways legal and social norms reinforce one another, acting with pernicious efficacy to codify and perpetuate intolerance. The early 1900s saw an unprecedented migration of African Americans leaving the rural South in search of better work and equal citizenship. In reaction, many white communities instituted property agreements—covenants—designed to limit ownership and residency according to race. Restrictive covenants quickly became a powerful legal guarantor of segregation, their authority facing serious challenge only in 1948, when the Supreme Court declared them legally unenforceable in Shelley v. Kraemer. Although the ruling was a shock to courts that had upheld covenants for decades, it failed to end their influence. In this incisive study, Richard Brooks and Carol Rose unpack why. At root, covenants were social signals. Their greatest use lay in reassuring the white residents that they shared the same goal, while sending a warning to would-be minority entrants: keep out. The authors uncover how loosely knit urban and suburban communities, fearing ethnic mixing or even “tipping,” were fair game to a new class of entrepreneurs who catered to their fears while exacerbating the message encoded in covenants: that black residents threatened white property values. Legal racial covenants expressed and bestowed an aura of legitimacy upon the wish of many white neighborhoods to exclude minorities. Sadly for American race relations, their legacy still lingers.

Saving the Neighborhood

Saving the Neighborhood PDF Author: Richard R. W. Brooks
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674073681
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Saving the Neighborhood tells the still controversial story of the rise and fall of racially restrictive covenants in America, which bestowed an aura of legitimacy upon the wish of many white neighborhoods to exclude minorities. It offers insight into the ways legal and social norms reinforce one another, to codify and perpetuate intolerance.

Saving the Neighborhood

Saving the Neighborhood PDF Author: Peggy Robin
Publisher: Wiley
ISBN: 9780471144205
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 428

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Book Description
As the development debate rages on, it has been the better-organized, better-financed developer who has been winning out over neighborhood homeowners. Written by a streetwise, battle-hardened expert who has beaten developers time and again, this complete how-to guide is packed with important information on how to protect your neighborhood from outside encroachment.

Saving America's Cities

Saving America's Cities PDF Author: Lizabeth Cohen
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 0374721602
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 331

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Book Description
Winner of the Bancroft Prize In twenty-first-century America, some cities are flourishing and others are struggling, but they all must contend with deteriorating infrastructure, economic inequality, and unaffordable housing. Cities have limited tools to address these problems, and many must rely on the private market to support the public good. It wasn’t always this way. For almost three decades after World War II, even as national policies promoted suburban sprawl, the federal government underwrote renewal efforts for cities that had suffered during the Great Depression and the war and were now bleeding residents into the suburbs. In Saving America’s Cities, the prizewinning historian Lizabeth Cohen follows the career of Edward J. Logue, whose shifting approach to the urban crisis tracked the changing balance between government-funded public programs and private interests that would culminate in the neoliberal rush to privatize efforts to solve entrenched social problems. A Yale-trained lawyer, rival of Robert Moses, and sometime critic of Jane Jacobs, Logue saw renewing cities as an extension of the liberal New Deal. He worked to revive a declining New Haven, became the architect of the “New Boston” of the 1960s, and, later, led New York State’s Urban Development Corporation, which built entire new towns, including Roosevelt Island in New York City. Logue’s era of urban renewal has a complicated legacy: Neighborhoods were demolished and residents dislocated, but there were also genuine successes and progressive goals. Saving America’s Cities is a dramatic story of heartbreak and destruction but also of human idealism and resourcefulness, opening up possibilities for our own time.

Integration Or Separation?

Integration Or Separation? PDF Author: Roy L. Brooks
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674456459
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
Brooks says with frank clarity what few will admit - integration has never worked and possibly never will. This book presents his strategy for a middle way between the increasingly unworkable extremes of integration and separation.

Neighborhood Defenders

Neighborhood Defenders PDF Author: Katherine Levine Einstein
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108477275
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
Public participation in the housing permitting process empowers unrepresentative and privileged groups who participate in local politics to restrict the supply of housing.

Crossing Broadway

Crossing Broadway PDF Author: Robert W. Snyder
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801455170
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
Robert W. Snyder's Crossing Broadway tells how disparate groups overcame their mutual suspicions to rehabilitate housing, build new schools, restore parks, and work with the police to bring safety to streets racked by crime and fear. It shows how a neighborhood once nicknamed "Frankfurt on the Hudson" for its large population of German Jews became "Quisqueya Heights"—the home of the nation's largest Dominican community. The story of Washington Heights illuminates New York City's long passage from the Great Depression and World War II through the urban crisis to the globalization and economic inequality of the twenty-first century. Washington Heights residents played crucial roles in saving their neighborhood, but its future as a home for working-class and middle-class people is by no means assured. The growing gap between rich and poor in contemporary New York puts new pressure on the Heights as more affluent newcomers move into buildings that once sustained generations of wage earners and the owners of small businesses. Crossing Broadway is based on historical research, reporting, and oral histories. Its narrative is powered by the stories of real people whose lives illuminate what was won and lost in northern Manhattan's journey from the past to the present. A tribute to a great American neighborhood, this book shows how residents learned to cross Broadway—over the decades a boundary that has separated black and white, Jews and Irish, Dominican-born and American-born—and make common cause in pursuit of one of the most precious rights: the right to make a home and build a better life in New York City.

The Past and Future City

The Past and Future City PDF Author: Stephanie Meeks
Publisher: Island Press
ISBN: 161091709X
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
At its most basic, historic preservation is about keeping old places alive, in active use, and relevant to the needs of communities today. As cities across America experience a remarkable renaissance, and more and more young, diverse families choose to live, work, and play in historic neighborhoods, the promise and potential of using our older and historic buildings to revitalize our cities is stronger than ever. This urban resurgence is a national phenomenon, boosting cities from Cleveland to Buffalo and Portland to Pittsburgh. Experts offer a range of theories on what is driving the return to the city—from the impact of the recent housing crisis to a desire to be socially engaged, live near work, and reduce automobile use. But there’s also more to it. Time and again, when asked why they moved to the city, people talk about the desire to live somewhere distinctive, to be some place rather than no place. Often these distinguishing urban landmarks are exciting neighborhoods—Miami boasts its Art Deco district, New Orleans the French Quarter. Sometimes, as in the case of Baltimore’s historic rowhouses, the most distinguishing feature is the urban fabric itself. While many aspects of this urban resurgence are a cause for celebration, the changes have also brought to the forefront issues of access, affordable housing, inequality, sustainability, and how we should commemorate difficult history. This book speaks directly to all of these issues. In The Past and Future City, Stephanie Meeks, the president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, describes in detail, and with unique empirical research, the many ways that saving and restoring historic fabric can help a city create thriving neighborhoods, good jobs, and a vibrant economy. She explains the critical importance of preservation for all our communities, the ways the historic preservation field has evolved to embrace the challenges of the twenty-first century, and the innovative work being done in the preservation space now. This book is for anyone who cares about cities, places, and saving America’s diverse stories, in a way that will bring us together and help us better understand our past, present, and future.

Neighborhood Watch

Neighborhood Watch PDF Author: Shawn E. Fields
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110884006X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 215

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Book Description
Although racism has plagued the American justice system since the nation's colonial beginnings, private White Americans are taking matters into their own hands. From racist 911 calls and hoaxes to grassroots voter suppression and vigilante 'self-defense,' concerted efforts are made every day by private citizens to exclude Black Americans from schools, neighborhoods, and positions of power. Neighborhood Watch examines the specific ways people police America's color line to protect 'White spaces.' The book charts how these actions too often result in harassment, arrest, injury, or death, yet typically go unchecked. Instead, these actions are promoted and encouraged by legislatures looking to expand racially discriminatory laws, a police system designed to respond with force to any frivolous report of Black 'mischief,' and a Supreme Court that has abdicated its role in rejecting police abuse. To combat these realities, Neighborhood Watch offers preliminary recommendations for reform, including changes to the 'maximum policing' state, increased accountability for civilians who abuse emergency response systems, and proposals to demilitarize the color line.

Saving Ruby King

Saving Ruby King PDF Author: Catherine Adel West
Publisher: Harlequin
ISBN: 1488057257
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 357

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Book Description
Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2020 by Ms. Magazine, USA Today Book Riot, The Rumpus, Library Journal, PureWow, The Every Girl, Parade and more. “Forever and to the end. That’s what they say instead of I love you.” When Ruby King’s mother is found murdered in their home in Chicago’s South Side, the police dismiss it as another act of violence in a black neighborhood. But for Ruby, it’s a devastating loss that leaves her on her own with her violent father. While she receives many condolences, her best friend, Layla, is the only one who understands how this puts Ruby in jeopardy. Their closeness is tested when Layla’s father, the pastor of their church, demands that Layla stay away. But what is the price for turning a blind eye? In a relentless quest to save Ruby, Layla uncovers the murky loyalties and dangerous secrets that have bound their families together for generations. Only by facing this legacy of trauma head-on will Ruby be able to break free. An unforgettable debut novel, Saving Ruby King is a powerful testament that history doesn’t determine the present and the bonds of friendship can forever shape the future.