Struggle for the City

Regular price €31.99
A01=Derek G. Handley
African American/Black Rhetoric
Age Group_Uncategorized
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Author_Derek G. Handley
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Black Freedom Movement
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=GTC
Category=HBJK
Category=NHTB
Category=RPC
Civil Rights Movement
COP=United States
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
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eq_isMigrated=2
eq_non-fiction
Language_English
PA=Available
Price_€20 to €50
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Rhetorical History
Rhetorical Leadership/Citizenship
softlaunch
Urban renewal
Urban Studies

Product details

  • ISBN 9780271097763
  • Weight: 340g
  • Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
  • Publication Date: 24 Sep 2024
  • Publisher: Pennsylvania State University Press
  • Publication City/Country: US
  • Product Form: Paperback
  • Language: English
Delivery/Collection within 10-20 working days

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The urban renewal policies stemming from the 1954 Housing Act and 1956 Highway Act destroyed the economic centers of many Black neighborhoods in the United States. Struggle for the City recovers the agency and solidarity of African American residents confronting this diagnosis of “blight” in northern cities in the 1950s and 1960s.

Examining Black newspapers, archival documents from Black organizations, and oral histories of community advocates, Derek G. Handley shows how African American residents in three communities—the Hill district of Pittsburgh, the Bronzeville neighborhood of Milwaukee, and the Rondo district of St. Paul—enacted a new form of citizenship to fight for their neighborhoods. Dubbing this the “Black Rhetorical Citizenship,” a nod to the integral role of language and other symbolic means in the Black Freedom Movement, Handley situates citizenship as both a site of resistance and a mode of public engagement that cannot be divorced from race and the effects of racism. Through this framework, Struggle for the City demonstrates how local organizers, leaders, and residents used rhetorics of placemaking, community organizing, and critical memory to resist the bulldozing visions of urban renewal.

By showing how African American residents built political community at the local level and by centering the residents in their own narratives of displacement, Handley recovers strategies of resistance that continue to influence the actions of the Black Freedom Movement, including Black Lives Matter.

Derek G. Handley is Assistant Professor in the English Department at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. He is also affiliated faculty in the African Diaspora Studies Department and in the Urban Studies program.