Download or read book Demolition Means Progress written by Andrew R. Highsmith and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2016-12-30 with total page 399 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Flint, Michigan, is widely seen as Detroit s Detroit: the perfect embodiment of a ruined industrial economy and a shattered American dream. In this deeply researched book, Andrew Highsmith gives us the first full-scale history of Flint, showing that the Vehicle City has always seen demolition as a tool of progress. During the 1930s, officials hoped to renew the city by remaking its public schools into racially segregated community centers. After the war, federal officials and developers sought to strengthen the region by building subdivisions in Flint s segregated suburbs, while GM executives and municipal officials demolished urban factories and rebuilt them outside the city. City leaders later launched a plan to replace black neighborhoods with a freeway and new factories. Each of these campaigns, Highsmith argues, yielded an ever more impoverished city and a more racially divided metropolis. By intertwining histories of racial segregation, mass suburbanization, and industrial decline, Highsmith gives us a deeply unsettling look at urban-industrial America."
Download or read book The Poisoned City written by Anna Clark and published by Metropolitan Books. This book was released on 2018-07-10 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of The Hillman Prize for Book Journalism - 2019 When the people of Flint, Michigan, turned on their faucets in April 2014, the water pouring out was poisoned with lead and other toxins. Through a series of disastrous decisions, the state government had switched the city’s water supply to a source that corroded Flint’s aging lead pipes. Complaints about the foul-smelling water were dismissed: the residents of Flint, mostly poor and African American, were not seen as credible, even in matters of their own lives. It took eighteen months of activism by city residents and a band of dogged outsiders to force the state to admit that the water was poisonous. By that time, twelve people had died and Flint’s children had suffered irreparable harm. The long battle for accountability and a humane response to this man-made disaster has only just begun. In the first full account of this American tragedy, Anna Clark's The Poisoned City recounts the gripping story of Flint’s poisoned water through the people who caused it, suffered from it, and exposed it. It is a chronicle of one town, but could also be about any American city, all made precarious by the neglect of infrastructure and the erosion of democratic decision making. Places like Flint are set up to fail—and for the people who live and work in them, the consequences can be fatal.
Download or read book Midnight in Vehicle City written by Edward McClelland and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2021-02-02 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2021 Midland Authors Book Award in History In a time of great inequality and a gutted middle class, the dramatic story of “the strike heard around the world” is a testament to what workers can gain when they stand up for their rights. The tumultuous Flint sit-down strike of 1936-1937 was the birth of the United Auto Workers, which set the standard for wages in every industry. Midnight in Vehicle City tells the gripping story of how workers defeated General Motors, the largest industrial corporation in the world. Their victory ushered in the golden age of the American middle class and created a new kind of America, one in which every worker had a right to a share of the company’s wealth. The causes for which the strikers sat down—collective bargaining, secure retirement, better wages—enjoyed a half century of success. But now, the middle class is disappearing and economic inequality is at its highest since before the New Deal. Journalist and historian Edward McClelland brings the action-packed events of the strike back to life—through the voices of those who lived it. In vivid play-by-plays, McClelland narrates the dramatic scenes including of the takeovers of GM plants; violent showdowns between picketers and the police; Michigan governor Frank Murphy’s activation of the National Guard; the actions of the militaristic Women’s Emergency Brigade who carried billy clubs and vowed to protect strikers from police; and tense negotiations between labor leader John L. Lewis, GM chairman Alfred P. Sloan, and labor secretary Frances Perkins. The epic tale of the strike and its lasting legacy shows why the middle class is one of the greatest inventions of the 20th century and will guide our understanding of what we will lose if we don’t revive it.
Download or read book Flint Fights Back written by Benjamin J. Pauli and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2019-05-14 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An account of the Flint water crisis shows that Flint's struggle for safe and affordable water is part of a broader struggle for democracy. When Flint, Michigan, changed its source of municipal water from Lake Huron to the Flint River, Flint residents were repeatedly assured that the water was of the highest quality. At the switchover ceremony, the mayor and other officials performed a celebratory toast, declaring “Here's to Flint!” and downing glasses of freshly treated water. But as we now know, the water coming out of residents' taps harbored a variety of contaminants, including high levels of lead. In Flint Fights Back, Benjamin Pauli examines the water crisis and the political activism that it inspired, arguing that Flint's struggle for safe and affordable water was part of a broader struggle for democracy. Pauli connects Flint's water activism with the ongoing movement protesting the state of Michigan's policy of replacing elected officials in financially troubled cities like Flint and Detroit with appointed “emergency managers.” Pauli distinguishes the political narrative of the water crisis from the historical and technical narratives, showing that Flint activists' emphasis on democracy helped them to overcome some of the limitations of standard environmental justice frameworks. He discusses the pro-democracy (anti–emergency manager) movement and traces the rise of the “water warriors”; describes the uncompromising activist culture that developed out of the experience of being dismissed and disparaged by officials; and examines the interplay of activism and scientific expertise. Finally, he explores efforts by activists to expand the struggle for water justice and to organize newly mobilized residents into a movement for a radically democratic Flint.
Download or read book What the Eyes Don t See written by Mona Hanna-Attisha and published by One World. This book was released on 2018-06-19 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • The dramatic story of the Flint water crisis, by a relentless physician who stood up to power. “Stirring . . . [a] blueprint for all those who believe . . . that ‘the world . . . should be full of people raising their voices.’”—The New York Times “Revealing, with the gripping intrigue of a Grisham thriller.” —O: The Oprah Magazine Here is the inspiring story of how Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, alongside a team of researchers, parents, friends, and community leaders, discovered that the children of Flint, Michigan, were being exposed to lead in their tap water—and then battled her own government and a brutal backlash to expose that truth to the world. Paced like a scientific thriller, What the Eyes Don’t See reveals how misguided austerity policies, broken democracy, and callous bureaucratic indifference placed an entire city at risk. And at the center of the story is Dr. Mona herself—an immigrant, doctor, scientist, and mother whose family’s activist roots inspired her pursuit of justice. What the Eyes Don’t See is a riveting account of a shameful disaster that became a tale of hope, the story of a city on the ropes that came together to fight for justice, self-determination, and the right to build a better world for their—and all of our—children. Praise for What the Eyes Don’t See “It is one thing to point out a problem. It is another thing altogether to step up and work to fix it. Mona Hanna-Attisha is a true American hero.”—Erin Brockovich “A clarion call to live a life of purpose.”—The Washington Post “Gripping . . . entertaining . . . Her book has power precisely because she takes the events she recounts so personally. . . . Moral outrage present on every page.”—The New York Times Book Review “Personal and emotional. . . She vividly describes the effects of lead poisoning on her young patients. . . . She is at her best when recounting the detective work she undertook after a tip-off about lead levels from a friend. . . . ‛Flint will not be defined by this crisis,’ vows Ms. Hanna-Attisha.”—The Economist “Flint is a public health disaster. But it was Dr. Mona, this caring, tough pediatrican turned detective, who cracked the case.”—Rachel Maddow
Download or read book Nobody written by Marc Lamont Hill and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-07-26 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An "analysis of deeper meaning behind the string of deaths of unarmed citizens like Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Freddie Gray, providing ... [commentary] on the intersection of race and class in America today"--
Download or read book Flint written by Louis L'Amour and published by Bantam. This book was released on 2005-01-25 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: He left the West at the age of seventeen, leaving behind a rootless past and a bloody trail of violence. In the East he became one of the wealthiest financiers in America—and one of the most feared and hated. Now, suffering from incurable cancer, he has come back to New Mexico to die alone. But when an all-out range war erupts, Flint chooses to help Nancy Kerrigan, a local rancher. A cold-eyed speculator is setting up the land swindle of a lifetime, and Buckdun, a notorious assassin, is there to back his play. Flint alone can help Nancy save her ranch…with his cash, his connections—and his gun. He still has his legendary will to fight. All he needs is time, and that’s fast running out….
Download or read book Tainted Tap written by Katrinell M. Davis and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2021-04-06 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After a cascade of failures left residents of Flint, Michigan, without a reliable and affordable supply of safe drinking water, citizens spent years demanding action from their city and state officials. Complaints from the city's predominantly African American residents were ignored until independent researchers confirmed dangerously elevated blood lead levels among Flint children and in the city's tap water. Despite a 2017 federal court ruling in favor of Flint residents who had demanded mitigation, those efforts have been incomplete at best. Assessing the challenges that community groups faced in their attempts to advocate for improved living conditions, Tainted Tap offers a rich analysis of conditions and constraints that created the Flint water crisis. Katrinell Davis contextualizes the crisis in Flint's long and troubled history of delivering essential services, the consequences of regional water-management politics, and other forms of systemic neglect that impacted the working-class community's health and well-being. Using ethnographic and empirical evidence from a range of sources, Davis also sheds light on the forms of community action that have brought needed changes to this underserved community.
Download or read book Groceryman written by Robert Lee Hamady and published by Planigale Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a true American tale, the story of the Hamady Clan of Flint, Michigan, whose patriarch came to America from Lebanon in 1908 and built a family business that grew to over $100,000,000 in sales. Over three generations, this large Druze family--54 members at its peak in 1945--lived with its own code of ethics, its deep cultural divides, its dark secret. It is also the story of a prophecy made by that patriarch many years ago: "First generation founds the business, second generation builds the business, third generation brings it down." And so it was. As told by the patriarch's grandson.
Download or read book Black Detroit written by Herb Boyd and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2017-06-06 with total page 470 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NAACP 2017 Image Award Finalist 2018 Michigan Notable Books honoree The author of Baldwin’s Harlem looks at the evolving culture, politics, economics, and spiritual life of Detroit—a blend of memoir, love letter, history, and clear-eyed reportage that explores the city’s past, present, and future and its significance to the African American legacy and the nation’s fabric. Herb Boyd moved to Detroit in 1943, as race riots were engulfing the city. Though he did not grasp their full significance at the time, this critical moment would be one of many he witnessed that would mold his political activism and exposed a city restless for change. In Black Detroit, he reflects on his life and this landmark place, in search of understanding why Detroit is a special place for black people. Boyd reveals how Black Detroiters were prominent in the city’s historic, groundbreaking union movement and—when given an opportunity—were among the tireless workers who made the automobile industry the center of American industry. Well paying jobs on assembly lines allowed working class Black Detroiters to ascend to the middle class and achieve financial stability, an accomplishment not often attainable in other industries. Boyd makes clear that while many of these middle-class jobs have disappeared, decimating the population and hitting blacks hardest, Detroit survives thanks to the emergence of companies such as Shinola—which represent the strength of the Motor City and and its continued importance to the country. He also brings into focus the major figures who have defined and shaped Detroit, including William Lambert, the great abolitionist, Berry Gordy, the founder of Motown, Coleman Young, the city’s first black mayor, diva songstress Aretha Franklin, Malcolm X, and Ralphe Bunche, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. With a stunning eye for detail and passion for Detroit, Boyd celebrates the music, manufacturing, politics, and culture that make it an American original.
Download or read book The Transatlantic Indian 1776 1930 written by Kate Flint and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-06-09 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book takes a fascinating look at the iconic figure of the Native American in the British cultural imagination from the Revolutionary War to the early twentieth century, and examining how Native Americans regarded the British, as well as how they challenged their own cultural image in Britain during this period. Kate Flint shows how the image of the Indian was used in English literature and culture for a host of ideological purposes, and she reveals its crucial role as symbol, cultural myth, and stereotype that helped to define British identity and its attitude toward the colonial world. Through close readings of writers such as Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, and D. H. Lawrence, Flint traces how the figure of the Indian was received, represented, and transformed in British fiction and poetry, travelogues, sketches, and journalism, as well as theater, paintings, and cinema. She describes the experiences of the Ojibwa and Ioway who toured Britain with George Catlin in the 1840s; the testimonies of the Indians in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show; and the performances and polemics of the Iroquois poet Pauline Johnson in London. Flint explores transatlantic conceptions of race, the role of gender in writings by and about Indians, and the complex political and economic relationships between Britain and America. The Transatlantic Indian, 1776-1930 argues that native perspectives are essential to our understanding of transatlantic relations in this period and the development of transnational modernity.
Download or read book American Flintknappers written by John C. Whittaker and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Whittaker's American Flintknappers will be an important resource for students of modern replication studies. This publication not only presents information on modern non-academic flintknappers, it also addresses issues of interest to anyone studying folk technologies in general."--The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute "This is a superb book, authored by one of the only people with both the anthropological background and the connections in the world of contemporary flintknapping to write it. It really is unlike any work I'm aware of in lithics studies."--Michael Stafford, Director, Cranbrook Institute of Science Making arrowheads, blades, and other stone tools was once a survival skill and is still a craft practiced by thousands of flintknappers around the world. In the United States, knappers gather at regional "knap-ins" to socialize, exchange ideas and material, buy and sell both equipment and knapped art, and make stone tools in the company of others. In between these gatherings, the knapping community stays connected through newsletters and the Internet. In this book, avid knapper and professional anthropologist John Whittaker offers an insider's view of the knapping community. He explores why stone tools attract modern people and what making them means to those who pursue this art. He describes how new members are incorporated into the knapping community, how novices learn the techniques of knapping and find their roles within the group, how the community is structured, and how ethics, rules, and beliefs about knapping are developed and transmitted. He also explains how the practice of knapping relates to professional archaeology, the trade in modern replicas of stone tools, and the forgery of artifacts. Whittaker's book thus documents a fascinating subculture of American life and introduces the wider public to an ancient and still rewarding craft.
Download or read book Hidden History of Flint written by Gary Flinn and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2017 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Beneath Flint's auto history lies a buried past. Local Civil War hero Franklin Thompson was actually Sarah Edmonds in disguise. Thread Lake's Lakeside Amusement Park offered seaplane rides and a giant roller coaster partly built over the water before closing in 1931. Smith-Bridgman's, the largest department store in town, reigned supreme for more than a century at the same location. And the city's most prolific inventor, Lloyd Copeman, created the electric stove, flexible ice cube tray and automatic toaster. Gary Flinn showcases the obscure and surprising elements of the Vehicle City's past, including how the 2014 water crisis was a half century in the making."-- Page [4] of cover.
Download or read book Poisoned Water written by Candy J Cooper and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2020-05-19 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on original reporting by a Pulitzer Prize finalist and an industry veteran, the first book for young adults about the Flint water crisis In 2014, Flint, Michigan, was a cash-strapped city that had been built up, then abandoned by General Motors. As part of a plan to save money, government officials decided that Flint would temporarily switch its water supply from Lake Huron to the Flint River. Within months, many residents broke out in rashes. Then it got worse: children stopped growing. Some people were hospitalized with mysterious illnesses; others died. Citizens of Flint protested that the water was dangerous. Despite what seemed so apparent from the murky, foul-smelling liquid pouring from the city's faucets, officials refused to listen. They treated the people of Flint as the problem, not the water, which was actually poisoning thousands. Through interviews with residents and intensive research into legal records and news accounts, journalist Candy J. Cooper, assisted by writer-editor Marc Aronson, reveals the true story of Flint. Poisoned Water shows not just how the crisis unfolded in 2014, but also the history of racism and segregation that led up to it, the beliefs and attitudes that fueled it, and how the people of Flint fought-and are still fighting-for clean water and healthy lives.
Download or read book Wrestling with Moses written by Anthony Flint and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2011-02-08 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The rivalry of Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses, a struggle for the soul of a city, is one of the most dramatic and consequential in modern American history. To a young Jane Jacobs, Greenwich Village, with its winding cobblestone streets and diverse makeup, was everything a city neighborhood should be. But consummate power broker Robert Moses, the father of many of New York’s most monumental development projects, thought neighborhoods like Greenwich Village were badly in need of “urban renewal.” Standing up against government plans for the city, Jacobs marshaled popular support and political power against Moses, whether to block traffic through her beloved Washington Square Park or to prevent the construction of the Lower Manhattan Expressway, an elevated superhighway that would have destroyed centuries-old streetscapes and displaced thousands of families. By confronting Moses and his vision, Jacobs forever changed the way Americans understood the city. Her story reminds us of the power we have as individuals to confront and defy reckless authority.
Download or read book The Fire in the Flint written by Walter Francis White and published by Graphic Arts Books. This book was released on 2021-05-21 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Fire in the Flint (1924) is a novel by Walter Francis White. Although he is generally recognized for his accomplishments as the longtime leader of the NAACP, White also wrote several novels during the Harlem Renaissance exploring the themes of Alain Locke’s New Negro Movement. Praised by W. E. B. Du Bois in The Crisis and by Konrad Bercovici in The Nation, The Fire in the Flint remains an invaluable testament to the power of fiction to address political matters. Dr. Kenneth Harper finds it difficult to overcome the deep inequities of life in the American South. Born and raised in Georgia, he returns to his hometown following his graduation from medical school and service in the First World War. Determined to open a clinic for his friends and neighbors, he avoids confrontation with white townspeople and focuses on the task at hand. Soon, however, he encounters opposition from neighbors who regard his success and intelligence as a threat to their power. Eventually, Harper is forced to lay his life on the line by opposing the Ku Klux Klan. The Fire in the Flint is a powerful bildungsroman grounded in truth and moral decency. Praised by Nobel Laureate Sinclair Lewis upon publication, White’s novel is a largely forgotten masterpiece of the Harlem Renaissance, perhaps the finest decade for art in the history of American culture. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Walter Francis White’s The Fire in the Flint is a classic of African American literature reimagined for modern readers.
Download or read book The Depths of Courage written by Flint Whitlock and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008-11-04 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chosen by WWII History magazine as one of the Best Books of the Year. In the dark days after Pearl Harbor, the small, illequipped arm of the Navy known as Submarine Force would stand between the shattered U.S. Pacific Fleet and the might of the Japanese Navy. Unfortunately, the spirit and courage of the Submarine Force is being forgotten as the veterans of that force pass into history. To preserve their heroic tales of war beneath the sea, critically acclaimed author and military historian Flint Whitlock, in collaboration with decorated World War II submarine veteran Ron Smith, set out on a journey of more than two years to interview submariners and to record their accounts before the memories of their endeavors are lost forever. These are their stories.
