Brownsville, Brooklyn: Blacks, Jews, and the Changing Face of the GhettoFrom 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. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
Brownsville 18801940 | 9 |
Brownsville in the Forties | 51 |
3 Blacks and Whites in the Optimistic Years | 81 |
Brownsville 19501957 | 105 |
5 Racial Change in a Progressive Neighborhood 19571965 | 147 |
The BethEl Hospital Strike of 1962 | 175 |
Other editions - View all
Brownsville, Brooklyn: Blacks, Jews, and the Changing Face of the Ghetto Wendell E. Pritchett No preview available - 2003 |
Brownsville, Brooklyn: Blacks, Jews, and the Changing Face of the Ghetto Wendell E. Pritchett No preview available - 2003 |
Common terms and phrases
active argued Baptist Church Baroff BCSP Papers Bedford-Stuyvesant Beth-El blacks and Latinos BNC leaders board of education Brooklyn Eagle Browns Brownsville activists Brownsville Houses Brownsville Neighborhood Council Brownsville residents Brownsville’s buildings Canarsie Celler city’s civil rights Committee Community Action community control congregations created crime decade decline dents Dyke East Flatbush East New York economic efforts Emmanuel Celler facilities families federal funds gang Ghetto Glauber Goell groups hospital housing projects immigrants increased institutions integration interview Jews labor majority Maurice Reid middle-income NAACP Negro Neighborhoods Change NYCHA Papers Ocean Hill Ocean Hill-Brownsville officials organizations Owens Park percent Pitkin Avenue police political poor population postwar Poverty problems protest public housing Puerto Rican racial recreational schools slum social staff strike synagogues teachers tenants tenements tion U.S. Census Bureau union urban renewal Van Dyke Houses workers working-class York Amsterdam York City York’s youths