The Politics of Public Housing: Black Women's Struggles Against Urban Inequality (Transgressing Boundaries)

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Summary: Placing Black Women at the Center of Urban History
Review: In this landmark case study, historian Rhonda Y. Williams redefines postwar urban history by placing black women's struggles at the center of an engaging and richly detailed narrative. Specifically, Williams focuses on the housing activism of poor black women in Baltimore to craft a story that expands the contours of the black freedom movement. By detailing the activism of low income women around everyday issues of "housing, food, clothing, and daily life in community spaces"--what the author describes as "activism at the point of consumption--The Politics of Public Housing unveils a hidden history of political struggle. Ultimately, this book chronicles the lives and heroic activism of tenants, community organizers, and single mothers who demanded dignity instead of demonization and held onto their self-respect in the face of horrible living conditions, insensitive bureacrats, and stigmas against pubic housing residents that relegated them to the political margins. Rhonda Y. Williams has successfully rescued these women's stories from history's dustbin and in the process produced a groundbreaking work of history. Readers interested in African-American, women's, urban, and working class history will enjoy this book.