scholarly journals "We Have Had It Up To Here": Murder, Civil Disorder, and Civil Rights in a Western Pennsylvanian Industrial Town

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-98
Author(s):  
Alex Tabor
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Small Towns ◽  
Federal State ◽  
Place And Space ◽  
Large Cities ◽  
Civil Disorder ◽  
State And Local ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Policies And Practices

In 1970, citizens of New Castle, Pennsylvania, a small industrial city an hour north of Pittsburgh, responded to the racially motivated murder of a local black Vietnam veteran in that city with vandalism and firebombing that forced the mayor to place the city under a state of emergency for three days. The series of exchanges preceding and following the murder reveals much about that city's history, and how several factors influenced local forms of racism. Existing scholarship has focused on racialized policies and practices in two spatial extremes—large cities and small towns—while this analysis seeks to illustrate how local, regional, and national influences shaped what forms of race-based policies and practices in spaces between these municipal extremes were permissible. Beyond place and space, this research contributes to a different set of conversations about the ways identity and community are articulated through the actions of individuals and groups, and how those understandings are shaped by individual and collective memory. This analysis begins by situating Ronald Mitchell's murder within the historical context of 1970s New Castle, broadens to place New Castle amid much larger and smaller municipalities across the country, and briefly contours some historical forces that shaped racism in policy or practice across time. I illustrate how federal, state, and local authorities responded to crises comparable to that which occurred in response to Mitchell's murder in the 1960s, and highlight how the underlying causes identified during investigations by those bodies manifested throughout the city's history and at the scene of Mitchell's murder. I also explore the role of institutions and memory in shaping knowledge and use of the past and build upon earlier scholarship in asserting their centrality to equitable futures.

The Chicano Movement: Mexican American History and the Struggle for Equality

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 31-52
Author(s):  
Carlos Muñoz
Keyword(s):  
High School Students ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
School Students ◽  
Mexican American History ◽  
Mass Protest ◽  
The 1960S

Abstract The Chicano/Chicana movement was a product of the global eruption that took place in 1968. A critical understanding of this movement requires that it be put into a historical context and theoretical framework of an indigenous people who were internally colonized by the expanding us Empire after the end of the us-Mexico War of 1846-48. Violent and nonviolent struggles took place prior to the 1960s over the issues of land, social justice, and civil rights. The first nonviolent and largest Mexican American mass protest in us history occurred in the Spring of 1968 in East Los Angeles, California, where over ten thousand Chicano high school students walked out of their inferior and racist barrio high schools. The student walkouts ignited the emergence of the Chicano civil rights movement. The movement’s positive contributions and failures will be discussed. Discussion will conclude with a critical analysis of Mexican American struggles in the present age of “Trumpism”.

Education in the Eighties

1980 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francis Keppel
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
State Government ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
State Governments ◽  
Federal Programs ◽  
State And Local ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Right

In the 1980s individual states will probably continue to have the major responsibility for education in this country. While the federal government may increase the percentage it contributes to the total costs of education, it will continue to be the junior partner in the enterprise, though one with increasing influence. This junior partner today places more demands on state government than its financial contribution seems to warrant. Conventional wisdom acquired in the 1960s and 1970s suggests that the federal government has set the right agenda on such issues as civil rights, poverty, and policies for minority groups and the handicapped—issues which state governments have generally neglected. But, under the Constitution, the federal government has not had the power to carry out its wishes for education without state and local cooperation. In fact, we often forget that a state's willingness to administer programs effectively is the key to the success of federal programs.

Facing Segregation

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Psychological Health ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
The United States ◽  
Urban Housing ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Income Development ◽  
The 1960S

Marking 50 years since the passage of the Fair Housing and Civil Rights Acts, this collection both builds on and departs from two generations of scholarship on urban development and inequality. The volume’s contributors provide historical context for patterns of segregation in the United States and present arguments for bold new policy actions ranging from the local to the national. Evidence for the negative effects of segregation and concentrated poverty in America’s cities now exists in abundance. Poor and underrepresented communities in segregated urban housing markets suffer diminished outcomes in education, economic mobility, political participation, and physical and psychological health. Many of the aggravating factors underlying this inequity have persisted or even grown worse in recent decades. Yet the level of energy and attention devoted to them by local and national policymakers has ebbed significantly from the levels that inspired the landmark civil rights legislation of the 1960s. This book refocuses our attention on achievable solutions by providing not just an overview of this timely subject but a roadmap forward, as the twenty-first century assesses the successes and failures of the housing policies inherited from the twentieth century. Instead of introducing new theories or empirical data sets describing the urban landscape, the book’s editors have gathered the field’s first collection of prescriptions for what ought to be done. Topics discussed include community development, the Community Reinvestment Act, education triage, housing choice vouchers, the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, mixed-income development, and tax increment financing.

scholarly journals Rural Social Safety Nets for Migrant Farmworkers in Michigan, 1942–1971

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-40
Author(s):  
Emily Prifogle
Keyword(s):  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Federal State ◽  
Aid Workers ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Safety Nets ◽  
Agricultural Laborers ◽  
State And Local ◽  
The 1960S

ABSTRACT In the 1960s, farmers pressed trespass charges against aid workers providing assistance to agricultural laborers living on the farmers’ private property. Some of the first court decisions to address these types of trespass, such as the well-known and frequently taught State v. Shack (1971), limited the property rights of farmers and enabled aid workers to enter camps where migrants lived. Yet there was a world before Shack, a world in which farmers welcomed onto their land rural religious groups, staffed largely by women from the local community, who provided services to migrant workers. From the 1940s through the 1960s, federal, state, and local law left large gaps in labor protections and government services for migrant agricultural laborers in Michigan. In response, church women created rural safety nets that mobilized local generosity and provided aid. This article uses Michigan as a case study to argue that these informal safety nets also policed migrant morality, maintained rural segregation, and performed surveillance of community outsiders, thereby serving the farmers’ goals of having a reliable and cheap labor force—ultimately strengthening the economic and legal structures that left agricultural workers vulnerable.

scholarly journals Refugees’ Access to Housing and Residency in German Cities: Internal Border Regimes and Their Local Variations

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nihad El-Kayed ◽  
Ulrike Hamann
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Local Level ◽  
National Level ◽  
Past Research ◽  
Federal State ◽  
State Regulations ◽  
Nation States ◽  
State And Local ◽  
German Cities ◽  
Local Levels

This article examines how state regulations, market barriers, racist discrimination as well as NGOs interact and create internal border regimes by enabling, as well as restricting, access to social and civil rights connected to housing and the freedom of movement and settlement for refugees. Our contribution builds on an analysis of federal and state regulations on housing for refugees who are either in the process of seeking asylum or have completed the process and have been granted an asylum status in Germany. The analysis aims to dissect the workings of these regulations in order to develop a detailed understanding of how these internal border regimes define barriers and access to social and civil rights. In addition to legal and regulatory barriers at the federal, state, and local levels, we identify several other barriers that affect if, how, and when refugees are able to enter local housing markets. We will examine these barriers based on an exemplary analysis of the situation in the cities of Berlin and Dresden, whereby we will apply concepts from border as well as citizenship studies to obtain a deeper understanding of the processes at hand. While contributions to the realm of border studies have so far mostly concentrated on national or EU borders, our approach follows recent literature that emphasises the need to analyse the workings of borders <em>internal to</em> nation-states but has so far not addressed local variations of the ways in which refugees are able to access their right to housing. In taking up this approach, we also stress the need to look at local dimensions of an increasing civic stratification of refugee rights, which past research has also conceptualised primarily on the national level. In both cities, we have collected administrative documents and conducted interviews with refugees, NGOs, and representatives from the local administration. Based on this material, we analyse the workings of administrative barriers at the state and local levels along with market barriers and discriminatory practices employed by landlords and housing companies at the local level. In most cases, these conditions restrict refugees’ access to housing. We will contrast these obstacles with insight into the strategies pursued by refugees and volunteers in their efforts to find a place to live in the city.

Generations of Stateless People: Many Years of The Rohingya’s Personal Security at Risk and the Support of the EU

2021 ◽  
Vol 35 (35) ◽  
pp. 22-49
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Daniel
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Access To Health Care ◽  
Physical Violence ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Humanitarian Crisis ◽  
Personal Security ◽  
Access To Health ◽  
The World ◽  
The 1960S

The Rohingya is an ethnic-religious Muslim minority that has struggled with serious human rights violations for decades. Indian migration to Burma, stimulated by British colonial rule, is pointed to as the main cause of the Muslim-Buddhist conflict. Although Indians in Burma currently constitute a fraction of the population (2.3%), resentment remained. The aim of the article is to analyze the threats to many aspects of the personal security of the Rohingya population. It is one of the most populous groups of stateless persons in the world; moreover, since the 1960s, this ethnic group has experienced oppression on a huge scale: from restrictions related to work and movement as well as difficult access to health care and education, through deprivation of civil rights , to physical violence and even death. All this is happening in the 21st century in front of the world. In order to better understand the Rohingya conflict with the Burmese army, the historical context and the course of the conflict were presented. The assistance activities of the European Union and possible solutions to this humanitarian crisis were also indicated.

Bureaucratic Effectiveness and Civil Rights Enforcement

2017 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 87-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles S. Bullock ◽  
Eric M. Wilk ◽  
Charles M. Lamb
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Urban Development ◽  
Federal State ◽  
Fair Housing ◽  
Two Factors ◽  
Fair Housing Act ◽  
State And Local ◽  
Dollar Amount ◽  
Local Agencies ◽  
The U.S

This article compares federal, state, and local civil rights agencies’ effectiveness in enforcing the Fair Housing Act. Two factors primarily define effective enforcement: whether agencies’ conciliation efforts are more likely to lead to agreements between the parties involved in complaints and whether agencies are more likely to provide remedies to complainants in cases in which there is cause to believe discrimination occurred. The analysis shows that state and local agencies are generally more effective than the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) both at conciliating complaints and at providing remedies. HUD does appear to be more effective than state and local agencies in terms of the dollar amount of monetary relief awarded when successful conciliations occur, but HUD’s remedial effectiveness disappears after controlling for the likelihood of successful conciliations.

Crawford Long, Alfred Blalock, Louis Wright, and Georgia's Surgical Heritage

2016 ◽  
Vol 82 (2) ◽  
pp. 89-94
Author(s):  
Don K. Nakayama
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Small Towns ◽  
History Of Surgery ◽  
American Medicine ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Jim Crow South ◽  
Blalock Taussig Shunt

Georgia and the Atlanta area are associated with three important figures in the history of surgery. Crawford Long (1815–1878) discovered the anesthetic effects of ether while in practice in Jefferson. Born in Culloden, Alfred Blalock (1899–1964) was a pioneer researcher in shock and resuscitation, and developed the Blalock–Taussig shunt for Tetralogy of Fallot. His technician, African-American Vivien Thomas (1910–1985), was a full partner in the landmark advances. Louis T. Wright (1891–1952) was born in LaGrange and grew up in the Jim Crow South. As the country's leading black surgeon, he led the integration of major hospitals and helped lay the groundwork for the landmark civil rights legislation of the 1960s that integrated American medicine. Their stories, with roots in small towns in Georgia, reveal the deep surgical traditions of the South.

Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing and the Inclusive Communities Project Case

2018 ◽  
pp. 77-91
Author(s):  
Philip D. Tegeler
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Urban Development ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Federal State ◽  
Fair Housing ◽  
Obama Administration ◽  
Economic Segregation ◽  
The Us ◽  
Fair Housing Act ◽  
State And Local

The Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) provisions of the 1968 Fair Housing Act require affirmative steps by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and its grantees to promote residential integration. By the beginning of the Obama administration, compliance with this provision had become an empty bureaucratic ritual for many jurisdictions and was identified as a key civil rights reform for the new HUD secretary. The final AFFH rule, issued in 2015, represents an important modernization of the Fair Housing Act’s AFFH provision and also signals a new kind of partnership among federal, state, and local governments to address racial and economic segregation.

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