Newark: A History of Race, Rights, and Riots in America

While acknowledging-and vividly rendering-the explosive moments in Newark's history, pioneering historian Kevin Mumford shows that the quotidian political struggles of everyday folk ultimately turned the city into one peopled and run by African Americans. Yet the ravages of de-industrialization, white flight, long-term corruption, and a draconian tax policy had hollowed out the city, transforming blacks hard-won prize into a congeries of social, economic, and political problems. Richly documented and immensely readable, Newark is also a model of sophistication. In Mumford's hands, concepts like the public sphere, citizenship, and racial identity take on a gritty reality that will engage political theorists, historians, and all those who care about the life and death of American cities. -Sonya Michel, University of Maryland, College Park Newark's volatile past is infamous. The city has become synonymous with the Black Power movement and urban crisis. Its history reveals a vibrant and contentious political culture punctuated by traditional civic pride and an understudied tradition of protest in the black community. Newark charts this important city's place in the nation, from its founding in 1666 by a dissident Puritan as a refuge from intolerance, through the days of Jim Crow and World War II civil rights activism, to the height of postwar integration and the election of its first black mayor. In this broad and balanced history of Newark, Kevin Mumford applies the concept of the public sphere to the problem of race relations, demonstrating how political ideas and print culture were instrumental in shaping African American consciousness. He draws on both public and personal archives, interpreting official documents-such as newspapers, commission testimony, and government records-alongside interviews, political flyers, meeting minutes, and rare photos. From the migration out of the south to the rise of public housing and ethnic conflict, Newark explains the impact of African Americans on the reconstruction of American cities in the twentieth century. Kevin Mumford is Associate Professor of History and African American studies at the University of Iowa. He is the author of Interzones: Black/White Sex Districts in Chicago and New York in the Early Twentieth Century.

Binding Type: Hardcover
Author: Mumford, Kevin
Published: 06/01/2007
Publisher: New York University Press
ISBN: 9780814757178
Pages: 308
Weight: 1.24lbs
Size: 9.17h x 6.25w x 0.97d