Battle for Bed-Stuy: The Long War on Poverty in New York City

Abstract

Historians have now rehabilitated the War on Poverty. Detailed case studies of antipoverty programs in large and small communities in all regions of the country have found that, rather than simply producing conflict, the War on Poverty empowered low-income residents, particularly minority women, to shape personal strategies for solving community problems. Constraints remained, and few efforts overcame the forces of structural economic change and conservative retrenchment. But such research has established that the War on Poverty can no longer be dismissed as a chaotic example of failed government overreach. Michael Woodsworth's fine study of Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, Battle for Bed-Stuy, exemplifies this historiography. It also adds a vital chapter to our understanding of the period. Despite its importance, Bedford-Stuyvesant has received relatively little attention compared to War on Poverty struggles in Harlem. Battle for Bed-Stuy fills this gap admirably, not only showing the accomplishment of activists such as Elsie Richardson, Shirley Chisholm, and Franklin Thomas but also extending the range of the antipoverty fight back to campaigns against juvenile delinquency in the late 1940s and 1950s and forward to the efforts of Community Development Corporations (CDCs) to create affordable housing and—with less success—economic development.