Mean Streets: Chicago Youths and the Everyday Struggle for Empowerment in the Multiracial City, 1908-1969"In a city that social scientists feel we know well, Mean Streets provides new and exciting insights into the spatial dimensions of urban life. Not afraid to talk about both attraction and repulsion, Diamond provocatively unearths the critical role of youths—ages 15 to 25—in leading their wider communities in the negotiation of race."—George Sanchez, author of Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles 1900-1945 "In Mean Streets, Andrew Diamond brilliantly bridges social, political, and cultural history. His deeply researched account of Chicago's black, white, and Latino youth subcultures offers a fresh perspective on the entangled histories of identity, power, and place. This is a first-rate book."—Thomas J. Sugrue, author of Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North. "This excellent social history of Chicago's youth gangs not only demonstrates their centrality to the vaunted community and turf consciousness of the city's neighborhoods; it also explains the widespread ethnic and racial conflict that has characterized the city for most of the twentieth century. Diamond accomplishes this with a remarkable amount of empirical research on the gritty streets, playgrounds and parks, dance halls, 'can houses' (brothels), and industrial wastelands in, between, and around these neighborhoods."—James R. Barrett, author of Work and Community in 'The Jungle': Chicago's Packing House Workers, 1894-1922. |
Contents
A mob of white youths chases down an African American | 1 |
The Generation of 1919 | 17 |
man during the 1919 race riot | 24 |
Two members of the mob stoning the man to death | 25 |
Between School and Work in the Interwar Years | 65 |
Fear Youth | 119 |
Race Class and Masculinity | 152 |
Young men gather outside a Cicero apartment building where a single black family resides 1951 | 167 |
Puerto Rican gang members roughhousing early 1960s | 215 |
A group of Junior Vice Lords in the North Lawndale area early 1960s | 238 |
Youth and Power | 240 |
Marchers in a demonstration during the school boycott 1964 | 248 |
A Blackstone Ranger spars playfully with a youngster | 266 |
A Blackstone Ranger and Rangerette mid1960s | 273 |
Members of the Blackstone Rangers 1967 | 276 |
White Power demonstrators opposing civil rights marches 1966 | 299 |
A Near Northwest Side youth gang poses for a photo | 173 |
Teenage Terrorism Fighting Gangs and Collective Action | 193 |
Members of the Puerto Rican Viceroys gang with a youth outreach worker circa 1960 | 210 |
Somewhere over the Rainbow | 301 |
Young Lords march after the funeral of Manuel Ramos 1969 | 307 |
Other editions - View all
Mean Streets: Chicago Youths and the Everyday Struggle for Empowerment in ... Andrew J. Diamond No preview available - 2009 |
Common terms and phrases
actions activities African Americans arrested Black Belt black Chicago Black Power black youths boys Calumet Park Canaryville Chicago Area Project Chicago Defender Chicago History Museum city’s civil rights color line Colts commercial leisure context crime crowd dance halls delinquency demonstrations district early European American example fighting gangs fighting-gang Folder forms gang members gangster ghetto girls High School housing ican identity immigrants interracial interwar Chicago Italian juvenile late leaders male masculinity Mexican Mexican youths mobilization Moreover movement Negro neighborhood organizations parents Park percent Poles police political postwar problem protest Puerto Rican race riot racial and ethnic racial violence rally Rangers Report residents revealed role second-generation sexual social South Chicago South Side street gangs super gangs teenagers teens tion Trumbull Park UIC-SC University Press urban Vice Lords West Side white youths working-class working-class Chicago working-class youths young youth gangs youth groups youth subcultures youth workers zoot suit