Download or read book The Essential Kerner Commission Report written by Jelani Cobb and published by Liveright Publishing. This book was released on 2021-07-27 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recognizing that an historic study of American racism and police violence should become part of today’s canon, Jelani Cobb contextualizes it for a new generation. The Kerner Commission Report, released a month before Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1968 assassination, is among a handful of government reports that reads like an illuminating history book—a dramatic, often shocking, exploration of systemic racism that transcends its time. Yet Columbia University professor and New Yorker correspondent Jelani Cobb argues that this prescient report, which examined more than a dozen urban uprisings between 1964 and 1967, has been woefully neglected. In an enlightening new introduction, Cobb reveals how these uprisings were used as political fodder by Republicans and demonstrates that this condensed edition of the Report should be essential reading at a moment when protest movements are challenging us to uproot racial injustice. A detailed examination of economic inequality, race, and policing, the Report has never been more relevant, and demonstrates to devastating effect that it is possible for us to be entirely cognizant of history and still tragically repeat it.

Download or read book The Kerner Report written by National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2016-05-10 with total page 543 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A landmark study of racism, inequality, and police violence that continues to hold important lessons today The Kerner Report is a powerful window into the roots of racism and inequality in the United States. Hailed by Martin Luther King Jr. as a "physician's warning of approaching death, with a prescription for life," this historic study was produced by a presidential commission established by Lyndon Johnson, chaired by former Illinois governor Otto Kerner, and provides a riveting account of the riots that shook 1960s America. The commission pointed to the polarization of American society, white racism, economic inopportunity, and other factors, arguing that only "a compassionate, massive, and sustained" effort could reverse the troubling reality of a racially divided, separate, and unequal society. Conservatives criticized the report as a justification of lawless violence while leftist radicals complained that Kerner didn’t go far enough. But for most Americans, this report was an eye-opening account of what was wrong in race relations. Drawing together decades of scholarship showing the widespread and ingrained nature of racism, The Kerner Report provided an important set of arguments about what the nation needs to do to achieve racial justice, one that is familiar in today’s climate. Presented here with an introduction by historian Julian Zelizer, The Kerner Report deserves renewed attention in America’s continuing struggle to achieve true parity in race relations, income, employment, education, and other critical areas.

Download or read book Separate and Unequal written by Steven M. Gillon and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2018-03-06 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From a New York Times bestselling author, the definitive history of the Kerner Commission, whose report on urban unrest reshaped American debates about race and inequality In Separate and Unequal, New York Times bestselling historian Steven M. Gillon offers a revelatory new history of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders -- popularly known as the Kerner Commission. Convened by President Lyndon Johnson after riots in Newark and Detroit left dozens dead and thousands injured, the commission issued a report in 1968 that attributed the unrest to "white racism" and called for aggressive new programs to end discrimination and poverty. "Our nation is moving toward two societies," it warned, "one black, and one white -- separate and unequal." Johnson refused to accept the Kerner Report, and as his political coalition unraveled, its proposals went nowhere. For the right, the report became a symbol of liberal excess, and for the left, one of opportunities lost. Separate and Unequal is essential for anyone seeking to understand the fraught politics of race in America.

Download or read book Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders written by United States. National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders and published by . This book was released on 1968 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Matter of Black Lives written by Jelani Cobb and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2021-09-28 with total page 883 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of The New Yorker‘s groundbreaking writing on race in America—including work by James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Hilton Als, Zadie Smith, and more—with a foreword by Jelani Cobb This anthology from the pages of the New Yorker provides a bold and complex portrait of Black life in America, told through stories of private triumphs and national tragedies, political vision and artistic inspiration. It reaches back across a century, with Rebecca West’s classic account of a 1947 lynching trial and James Baldwin’s “Letter from a Region in My Mind” (which later formed the basis of The Fire Next Time), and yet it also explores our current moment, from the classroom to the prison cell and the upheavals of what Jelani Cobb calls “the American Spring.” Bringing together reporting, profiles, memoir, and criticism from writers such as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Elizabeth Alexander, Hilton Als, Vinson Cunningham, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Malcolm Gladwell, Jamaica Kincaid, Kelefa Sanneh, Doreen St. Félix, and others, the collection offers startling insights about this country’s relationship with race. The Matter of Black Lives reveals the weight of a singular history, and challenges us to envision the future anew.

Download or read book America on Fire The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s written by Elizabeth Hinton and published by Liveright Publishing. This book was released on 2021-05-18 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Not since Angela Davis’s 2003 book, Are Prisons Obsolete?, has a scholar so persuasively challenged our conventional understanding of the criminal legal system.” —Ronald S. Sullivan, Jr., Washington Post From one of our top historians, a groundbreaking story of policing and “riots” that shatters our understanding of the post–civil rights era. What began in spring 2020 as local protests in response to the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police quickly exploded into a massive nationwide movement. Millions of mostly young people defiantly flooded into the nation’s streets, demanding an end to police brutality and to the broader, systemic repression of Black people and other people of color. To many observers, the protests appeared to be without precedent in their scale and persistence. Yet, as the acclaimed historian Elizabeth Hinton demonstrates in America on Fire, the events of 2020 had clear precursors—and any attempt to understand our current crisis requires a reckoning with the recent past. Even in the aftermath of Donald Trump, many Americans consider the decades since the civil rights movement in the mid-1960s as a story of progress toward greater inclusiveness and equality. Hinton’s sweeping narrative uncovers an altogether different history, taking us on a troubling journey from Detroit in 1967 and Miami in 1980 to Los Angeles in 1992 and beyond to chart the persistence of structural racism and one of its primary consequences, the so-called urban riot. Hinton offers a critical corrective: the word riot was nothing less than a racist trope applied to events that can only be properly understood as rebellions—explosions of collective resistance to an unequal and violent order. As she suggests, if rebellion and the conditions that precipitated it never disappeared, the optimistic story of a post–Jim Crow United States no longer holds. Black rebellion, America on Fire powerfully illustrates, was born in response to poverty and exclusion, but most immediately in reaction to police violence. In 1968, President Lyndon Johnson launched the “War on Crime,” sending militarized police forces into impoverished Black neighborhoods. Facing increasing surveillance and brutality, residents threw rocks and Molotov cocktails at officers, plundered local businesses, and vandalized exploitative institutions. Hinton draws on exclusive sources to uncover a previously hidden geography of violence in smaller American cities, from York, Pennsylvania, to Cairo, Illinois, to Stockton, California. The central lesson from these eruptions—that police violence invariably leads to community violence—continues to escape policymakers, who respond by further criminalizing entire groups instead of addressing underlying socioeconomic causes. The results are the hugely expanded policing and prison regimes that shape the lives of so many Americans today. Presenting a new framework for understanding our nation’s enduring strife, America on Fire is also a warning: rebellions will surely continue unless police are no longer called on to manage the consequences of dismal conditions beyond their control, and until an oppressive system is finally remade on the principles of justice and equality.

Download or read book The Color of the Law written by Gail Williams O'Brien and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2011-02-01 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On February 25, 1946, African Americans in Columbia, Tennessee, averted the lynching of James Stephenson, a nineteen-year-old, black Navy veteran accused of attacking a white radio repairman at a local department store. That night, after Stephenson was safely out of town, four of Columbia's police officers were shot and wounded when they tried to enter the town's black business district. The next morning, the Tennessee Highway Patrol invaded the district, wrecking establishments and beating men as they arrested them. By day's end, more than one hundred African Americans had been jailed. Two days later, highway patrolmen killed two of the arrestees while they were awaiting release from jail. Drawing on oral interviews and a rich array of written sources, Gail Williams O'Brien tells the dramatic story of the Columbia "race riot," the national attention it drew, and its surprising legal aftermath. In the process, she illuminates the effects of World War II on race relations and the criminal justice system in the United States. O'Brien argues that the Columbia events are emblematic of a nationwide shift during the 1940s from mob violence against African Americans to increased confrontations between blacks and the police and courts. As such, they reveal the history behind such contemporary conflicts as the Rodney King and O. J. Simpson cases.

Download or read book The Substance of Hope written by William Jelani Cobb and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2010-06-02 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For acclaimed historian William Jelani Cobb, the historic election of Barack Obama to the presidency is not the most remarkable development of the 2008 election; even more so is the fact that Obama won some 90 percent of the black vote in the primaries across America despite the fact that the established black leadership since the civil rights era-men like Jesse Jackson, John Lewis, Andrew Young, who paved the way for his candidacy-all openly supported Hillary Clinton. Clearly a sea change has occurred among black voters, ironically pushing the architects of the civil rights movement toward the periphery at the moment when their political dreams were most fully realized. How this has happened, and the powerful implications it holds for America's politics and social landscape, is the focus of The Substance of Hope, a deeply insightful, paradigm-shifting examination of a new generation of voters that has not been shaped by the raw memory of Jim Crow and has a different range of imperatives. Cobb sees Obama's ascendancy as "a reality that has been taking shape in tiny increments for the past four decades," and examines thorny issues such as the paradox and contradictions embodied in race and patriotism, identity and citizenship; how the civil rights leadership became a political machine; why the term "postracial" is as iniquitous as it is inaccurate; and whether our society has really changed with Obama's election. Elegantly written and powerfully argued, The Substance of Hope challenges conventional wisdom as it offers original insight into America's future.

Download or read book On the Courthouse Lawn written by Sherrilyn Ifill and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2007-02-15 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nearly 5,000 black Americans were lynched between 1890 and 1960. Over forty years later, Sherrilyn Ifill's On the Courthouse Lawn examines the numerous ways that this racial trauma still resounds across the United States. While the lynchings and their immediate aftermath were devastating, the little-known contemporary consequences, such as the marginalization of political and economic development for black Americans, are equally pernicious. On the Courthouse Lawn investigates how the lynchings implicated average white citizens, some of whom actively participated in the violence while many others witnessed the lynchings but did nothing to stop them. Ifill observes that this history of complicity has become embedded in the social and cultural fabric of local communities, who either supported, condoned, or ignored the violence. She traces the lingering effects of two lynchings in Maryland to illustrate how ubiquitous this history is and issues a clarion call for American communities with histories of racial violence to be proactive in facing this legacy today. Inspired by South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, as well as by techniques of restorative justice, Ifill provides concrete ideas to help communities heal, including placing gravestones on the unmarked burial sites of lynching victims, issuing public apologies, establishing mandatory school programs on the local history of lynching, financially compensating those whose family homes or businesses were destroyed in the aftermath of lynching, and creating commemorative public spaces. Because the contemporary effects of racial violence are experienced most intensely in local communities, Ifill argues that reconciliation and reparation efforts must also be locally based in order to bring both black and white Americans together in an efficacious dialogue. A landmark book, On the Courthouse Lawn is a much-needed and urgent road map for communities finally confronting lynching's long shadow by embracing pragmatic reconciliation and reparation efforts.

Download or read book Communities in Action written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2017-04-27 with total page 583 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.

Download or read book The Earth the City and the Hidden Narrative of Race written by Carl Anthony and published by New Village Press. This book was released on 2017-10-10 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this work, Carl Anthony shares his perspectives as an African-American child in post-World War II Philadelphia; a student and civil rights activist in 1960s Harlem; a traveling student of West African architecture; and an architect, planner, and environmental justice advocate in Berkeley. He contextualizes this within American urbanism and human origins, making profoundly personal both African American and American urban histories as well as planetary origins and environmental issues, to not only bring a new worldview to people of color, but to set forth a truly inclusive vision of our shared planetary future. The Earth, the City, and the Hidden Narrative of Race connects the logics behind slavery, community disinvestment, and environmental exploitation to address the most pressing issues of our time in a cohesive and foundational manner. Most books dealing with these topics and periods silo issues apart from one another, but this book contextualizes the connections between social movements and issues, providing tremendous insight into successful movement building. Anthony's rich narrative describes both being at the mercy of racism, urban disinvestment, and environmental injustice as well as fighting against these forces with a variety of strategies. Because this work is both a personal memoir and an exposition of ideas, it will appeal to those who appreciate thoughtful and unique writing on issues of race, including individuals exploring their own African American identity, as well as progressive audiences of organizations and community leaders and professionals interested in democratizing power and advancing equitable policies for low-income communities and historically disenfranchised communities.

Download or read book Gandhi written by David Arnold and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-06-17 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gandhi's is an extraordinary and compelling story. Few individuals in history have made so great a mark upon their times. And yet Gandhi never held high political office, commanded no armies and was not even a compelling orator. His 'power' therefore makes a particularly fascinating subject for investigation. David Arnold explains how and why the shy student and affluent lawyer became one of the most powerful anti-colonial figures Western empires in Asia ever faced and why he aroused such intense affection, loyalty (and at times much bitter hatred) among Indians and Westerners alike. Attaching as much influence to the idea and image of Gandhi as to the man himself, Arnold sees Gandhi not just as a Hindu saint but as a colonial subject, whose attitudes and experiences expressed much that was common to countless others in India and elsewhere who sought to grapple with the overwhelming power and cultural authority of the West. A vivid and highly readable introducation to Gandhi's life and times, Arnold's book opens up fascinating insights into one of the twentieth century's most remarkable men.

Download or read book The Fifty Year Rebellion written by Scott Kurashige and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2017-07-04 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "On July 23, 1967, the eyes of the nation fixed on Detroit as thousands took to the streets to vent their frustrations with white racism, police brutality, and vanishing job prospects in the place that gave rise to the American Dream. For mainstream observers, the "riot" brought about the ruin of a once-great city, and then in 2013, the city's municipal bankruptcy served as a bailout that paved the way for Detroit to finally be rebuilt. Challenging this prevailing view, Scott Kurashige portrays the past half-century as a long "rebellion" the underlying tensions of which continue to haunt the city and the U.S. nation-state. Michigan's scandal-ridden emergency-management regime represents the most concerted effort to quell this rebellion by disenfranchising the majority black citizenry and neutralizing the power of unions. The corporate architects of Detroit's restructuring have championed the creation of a "business-friendly" city where billionaire developers are subsidized to privatize and gentrify downtown while working-class residents are squeezed out by rampant housing evictions, school closures, water shutoffs, toxic pollution, and militarized policing. From the grassroots, however, Detroit has emerged as an international model for survival, resistance, and solidarity through the creation of urban farms, freedom schools, and self-governing communities. A quintessential American story of tragedy and hope, The Fifty-Year Rebellion forces us to look in the mirror and ask, Are we succumbing to authoritarian plutocracy, or can we create a new society rooted in social justice and participatory democracy?"--Provided by publisher.

Download or read book Black Silent Majority written by Michael Javen Fortner and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2015-09-28 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Often seen as a political sop to the racial fears of white voters, aggressive policing and draconian sentencing for illegal drug possession and related crimes have led to the imprisonment of millions of African Americans—far in excess of their representation in the population as a whole. Michael Javen Fortner shows in this eye-opening account that these punitive policies also enjoyed the support of many working-class and middle-class blacks, who were angry about decline and disorder in their communities. Black Silent Majority uncovers the role African Americans played in creating today’s system of mass incarceration. Current anti-drug policies are based on a set of controversial laws first adopted in New York in the early 1970s and championed by the state’s Republican governor, Nelson Rockefeller. Fortner traces how many blacks in New York came to believe that the rehabilitation-focused liberal policies of the 1960s had failed. Faced with economic malaise and rising rates of addiction and crime, they blamed addicts and pushers. By 1973, the outcry from grassroots activists and civic leaders in Harlem calling for drastic measures presented Rockefeller with a welcome opportunity to crack down on crime and boost his political career. New York became the first state to mandate long prison sentences for selling or possessing narcotics. Black Silent Majority lays bare the tangled roots of a pernicious system. America’s drug policies, while in part a manifestation of the conservative movement, are also a product of black America’s confrontation with crime and chaos in its own neighborhoods.

Download or read book A More Perfect Reunion written by Calvin Baker and published by Bold Type Books. This book was released on 2020-06-30 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A provocative case for integration as the single most radical, discomfiting idea in America, yet the only enduring solution to the racism that threatens our democracy. Americans have prided ourselves on how far we've come from slavery, lynching, and legal segregation-measuring ourselves by incremental progress instead of by how far we have to go. But fifty years after the last meaningful effort toward civil rights, the US remains overwhelmingly segregated and unjust. Our current solutions -- diversity, representation, and desegregation -- are not enough. As acclaimed writer Calvin Baker argues in this bracing, necessary book, we first need to envision a society no longer defined by the structures of race in order to create one. The only meaningful remedy is integration: the full self-determination and participation of all African-Americans, and all other oppressed groups, in every facet of national life. This is the deepest threat to the racial order and the real goal of civil rights. At once a profound, masterful reading of US history from the colonial era forward and a trenchant critique of the obstacles in our current political and cultural moment, A More Perfect Reunion is also a call to action. As Baker reminds us, we live in a revolutionary democracy. We are one of the best-positioned generations in history to finish that revolution.

Download or read book How We Fight White Supremacy written by Akiba Solomon and published by Bold Type Books. This book was released on 2019-03-26 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This celebration of Black resistance, from protests to art to sermons to joy, offers a blueprint for the fight for freedom and justice -- and ideas for how each of us can contribute Many of us are facing unprecedented attacks on our democracy, our privacy, and our hard-won civil rights. If you're Black in the US, this is not new. As Colorlines editors Akiba Solomon and Kenrya Rankin show, Black Americans subvert and resist life-threatening forces as a matter of course. In these pages, leading organizers, artists, journalists, comedians, and filmmakers offer wisdom on how they fight White supremacy. It's a must-read for anyone new to resistance work, and for the next generation of leaders building a better future. Featuring contributions from: Ta-Nehisi Coates Tarana Burke Harry Belafonte adrienne maree brown Alicia Garza Patrisse Khan-Cullors Reverend Dr. Valerie Bridgeman Kiese Laymon Jamilah Lemieux Robin DG Kelley Damon Young Michael Arceneaux Hanif Abdurraqib Dr. Yaba Blay Diamond Stingily Amanda Seales Imani Perry Denene Millner Kierna Mayo John Jennings Dr. Joy Harden Bradford Tongo Eisen-Martin

Download or read book Advancing Equity Planning Now written by Norman Krumholz and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-15 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What can planners do to restore equity to their craft? Drawing upon the perspectives of a diverse group of planning experts, Advancing Equity Planning Now places the concepts of fairness and equal access squarely in the center of planning research and practice. Editors Norman Krumholz and Kathryn Wertheim Hexter provide essential resources for city leaders and planners, as well as for students and others, interested in shaping the built environment for a more just world. Advancing Equity Planning Now remind us that equity has always been an integral consideration in the planning profession. The historic roots of that ethical commitment go back more than a century. Yet a trend of growing inequality in America, as well as other recent socio-economic changes that divide the wealthiest from the middle and working classes, challenge the notion that a rising economic tide lifts all boats. When planning becomes mere place-making for elites, urban and regional planners need to return to the fundamentals of their profession. Although they have not always done so, planners are well-positioned to advocate for greater equity in public policies that address the multiple objectives of urban planning including housing, transportation, economic development, and the removal of noxious land uses in neighborhoods. Thanks to generous funding from Cleveland State University, the ebook editions of this book are available as Open Access volumes from Cornell Open (cornellpress.cornell.edu/cornell-open) and other repositories.