Latino City explores the transformation of Lawrence; Massachusetts; into New England's first Latino-majority city. Like many industrial cities; Lawrence entered a downward economic spiral in the decades after World War II due to deindustrialization and suburbanization. The arrival of tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans and Dominicans in the late twentieth century brought new life to the struggling city; but settling in Lawrence was fraught with challenges. Facing hostility from their neighbors; exclusion from local governance; inadequate city services; and limited job prospects; Latinos fought and organized for the right to make a home in the city. In this book; Llana Barber interweaves the histories of urban crisis in U.S. cities and imperial migration from Latin America. Pushed to migrate by political and economic circumstances shaped by the long history of U.S. intervention in Latin America; poor and working-class Latinos then had to reckon with the segregation; joblessness; disinvestment; and profound stigma that plagued U.S. cities during the crisis era; particularly in the Rust Belt. For many Puerto Ricans and Dominicans; there was no "American Dream" awaiting them in Lawrence; instead; Latinos struggled to build lives for themselves in the ruins of industrial America.
#898578 in Books Jakobi Williams 2015-02-01 2015-02-01Original language:EnglishPDF # 1 9.10 x .76 x 6.00l; 1.00 #File Name: 1469622106304 pagesFrom the Bullet to the Ballot The Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party and Racial Coalition Politics in Chicago John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture Paperback
Review
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. Excellant insightBy Michael D. McCartyAn excellent insight into the dynamics of Fred Hampton's leadership of the Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party which was headquartered in Chicago.1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. great readBy Diana KitchingEvery black male young and old should read and learn the truth about the black panthers and read about the author8 of 8 people found the following review helpful. The Bullet to the Ballot by Jakobi Williams is a precious gem on Black LiberationBy Komozi WoodardThe Bullet to the Ballot by Jakobi WilliamsJakobi Williams has presented a precious gem to Black Power Studies. One of the most heralded personalities in Black Panther lore is Fred Hampton; however; we have virtually no scholarly studies published on Fred Hampton and the history of the Illinois Black Panther Party. Thus; this new volume will fill an enormous gap in the scholarship on the Civil Rights-Black Power era. For more than a decade; experts have known of the unpublished dissertation of Jon Rice on the Chicago Panthers; however; Rice is not interested in turning that into a published book; providing us with only one chapter in the anthology; Freedom North.If the story of the origins of the Black Panther Party in Oakland has fascinated students for decades; then the story of the Black Panther Party in Chicago has remained a major mystery. There have always been hints that Fred Hampton and the Illinois Black Panther Party represented the best possible hope for a future as the BPP found itself in profound crisis. However; this new volume demonstrates that possibility was just the tip of the iceberg.Here we have the grossly neglected and exciting story of young people; beginning in high school; fighting for civil rights and the desegregation of public schools; recreation areas and specifically swimming pools. In other words; this is the big story of the grassroots struggle for justice in the Jim Crow North.A youth movement at the grassroots in Chicago and its suburbs; starting in its newly desegregated high schools and extending into its local colleges and universities; developed in the Civil Rights movement with Dr. King and local leaders of the Chicago Freedom Movement; and after those efforts to desegregate housing; employment and recreation; that movement developed into new heights. The Illinois Black Panther Party became the political vehicle for that student movement; particularly for high school students who found themselves physically and intellectually attacked on a daily basis. This volume shows that those young people searched for vehicles of expression before the arrival of the Black Panther Party.One of those young people was Fred Hampton who developed himself into a leader by representing the concerns of high school students in school and in the community; including the lack of desegregated recreational; cultural and intellectual spaces. Hampton stood out as a leader in everyday life; from his work as a patrol boy and Boy Scout in grammar school to his sports activities. Thus; one of the leaders of the local NAACP selected him to organize the youth branch of that civil rights organization. Because of his instinct for the social and cultural needs of young people; Hampton was able to recruit hundreds of new members in the first year.As a leader in the NAACP Hampton developed and spread a sense of the national Civil Rights struggle; including the marches and demonstrations not only in Chicago movement but also in the Mississippi movement. And he involved his members in drives supporting the Mississippi movement. Keeping abreast of those developments in the Black Revolt; he found out about the rise of the Black Power movement; including the Black Panthers in Lowndes County; Alabama and those in Oakland; California.Long before there was a Black Panther Party for Self-Defense in Oakland; the Chicago black student movement was concerned with day to day issues of self-defense both during and after school. White students outnumbered black students and school fights triggered race riots.In addition to concerns about the lack of school and police protection against white mobs and problems of self-defense; students were concerned with the lack of diversity in the curriculum. Those issues galvanized black students from high school to college as they began to propose black history; black teachers and black studies courses.The black student movement was involved in the Chicago Freedom Movement and helped develop its agenda. Outside of school there were street organizations; including community groups; social clubs and gangs. And some of those groups; particularly the Young Lords were in a process of self-transformation before they knew of Black Panthers. Yet the model of the Black Panthers in terms of politics; methodology and social programs inspired the imaginative power of many of the youth groups to realize the power they had to develop solutions to their own problems.In addition to school issues; a host of young people were concerned about the urban renewal programs that threatened their daily lives with massive evictions. The Black Panther Party offered them a perspective that helped them change their sense of identity as young people from worthless to priceless. And in line with that they developed a number of programs for children that were hungry and for neighbors that were sick and needy. That grassroots political work gave young people a new sense of themselves and the future possibilities of their neighborhoods.For the first time; we have the important and compelling story of Fred Hampton's proposal for a Rainbow Coalition and Bob Lee's genius at organizing that vision into a political reality. This history introduces us to the ensemble of grassroots leadership that flowered around Fred Hampton and the Black Panthers. And it shows us very concretely how it spread from group to group and from neighborhood to neighborhood: Black Panthers; Young Lords; Young Patriots; Rising Up Angry; Student for a Democratic Society and so forth. We see the story high school by high school and college by college without abstraction or mystification. Indeed; this study is the northern answer to the pioneering work of Charles Payne's examination of the organizing tradition in the Mississippi Movement.This book is at the high level of analysis that marks pioneering work like that of Donna Murch in the Bay Area; Matthew Countryman in Philadelphia as well as the best of the Southern studies (Payne; Dittmer; Jeffries; etc) that laid the foundation for this branch of scholarship. Above all; this book fleshes out a northern organizing tradition that flowered in the Civil Rights-Black Power era.There is also plenty of evidence here to contradict the cultural poverty arguments that make the successful organizational; political and institutional developments demonstrated here "unthinkable" in most American textbooks.In terms of this historiography; the book engages the pivotal and heated controversies about the origins; sources and anatomy of the Black Power movement by telling the distinctive and revealing story of Fred Hampton and the Illinois Black Panther Party. First; if some scholars have conceived a "Chinese Wall" between the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Power Movement; then Jakobi Williams demonstrates that the boundaries between those two were so porous and messy that only a careful analysis of the local movement would discern the thousands of threads that bound the two together.To switch metaphors; Williams suggests that the Black Revolt was an epic upsurge that mounted into successive waves. Thus; the Black Panther Party had its sources inside the Chicago Freedom Movement; particularly in the black student movement in the high schools and local colleges. Furthermore; the Black Panther Party took over the unfinished agenda of the Chicago Freedom Movement: desegregation of public schools; desegregation of youth recreation; horrifying housing conditions; high unemployment; persistent poverty; antiquated school curriculum; malnourished school children and so forth.The pivotal but neglected group in this drama was the black student movement: "Black Chicago youth were at the forefront of the city's civil rights struggle in the late 1960s." If high school student activism has been largely ignored in this scholarship; this book may mark the dramatic turning point after which it can no longer be overlooked. The students attending the high schools and community colleges have a very different class composition that the traditional student movements we've examined in the past. These are the children of working class and impoverished African Americans; Latinos and whites.And I have seen no better study of the nuances in the white working class than this. Rather than lump all the poor whites together; this books shows us the struggle that splits those young people into at least three camps: those in desegregated schools that wanted to get along with their new black classmates; those who joined hate groups to attack black students; and those who saw enough commonality in social class and aspirations to join with them in the Rainbow Coalition.I could go on and on about the virtues of this book; but as you can see there are many important reasons to study this epic tale of black liberation in the Jim Crow North.Komozi WoodardEsther Raushenbush ProfessorHistory; Public Policy and Africana StudiesSarah Lawrence CollegeBronxville; New York
