Black Citymakers revisits the Black Seventh Ward, documenting a century of banking and tenement collapses, housing activism, black-led anti-urban renewal mobilization, and post-Civil Rights political change from the perspective of the Black Seventh Warders. Drawing on historical, political, and sociological research, Marcus Hunter argues that black Philadelphians were by no means mere casualties of the large scale social and political changes that altered urban dynamics across the nation after World War II. Instead, Hunter shows that black Americans framed their own understandings of urban social change, forging dynamic inter- and intra-racial alliances that allowed them to shape their own migration from the old Black Seventh Ward to emergent black urban enclaves throughout Philadelphia. These Philadelphians were not victims forced from their homes–they were citymakers and agents of urban change. This empirically rich, theoretically smart, and narratively elegant book charts a bold new course for the study of race and politics in urban history and sociology.” – Mary Pattillo, author of Black on the Block: The Politics of Race and Class in the City.
Source: Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press | March 2013 | ISBN: 9780199948130