Civil Rights in New York City: From World War II to the Giuliani Era by Clarence Taylor

Abstract

Reviewed by: Civil Rights in New York City: From World War II to the Giuliani Era by Clarence Taylor David Lucander Civil Rights in New York City: From World War II to the Giuliani Era. By Clarence Taylor. New York: Fordham University Press, 2011, 282 pages, $18.00 Paper, $65.00 Cloth. As the metropolitan area with the largest African American population in the United States, New York City holds a special place in this country's history of race relations. Indeed, New York City often serves as an entry point for discussions of urban issues such as poverty, gentrification, police brutality, under-performing schools, and the various forms of activism combating these societal ills. Likewise, as the center of artistic production associated with the Harlem Renaissance and the birthplace of hip hop, New York City has long been recognized as the cultural capital of Black America. Somehow, however, New York City's seminal place in the story of the civil rights movement has been largely overlooked. Recent historiography has paid increasing attention to civil rights activism and race relations in the urban north, and this edited volume directs its focus squarely on New York City. As a group, these article-length essays reveal that New York City has been, and is, a center of civil rights activism and should be considered alongside Montgomery and Selma whenever one thinks about the geography of the struggle against racism or the civil rights movement. Edited by Clarence Taylor, professor emeritus at Baruch College, this collection of ten independent chapters is a valuable addition to those studying the history of New York City. Further, scholars exploring the struggle for civil rights in the north, urban history, and general African American history will find Civil Rights in New York City an important contribution to the field. Each of the writers featured is the author of a book-length study about his or her subject. In this regard, Civil Rights in New York City functions as a scholarly mixtape—it is both an entry into more detailed works as well as a streamlined single-volume synopsis of several longer studies. Taylor's introductory essay provides context for the larger events shaping the period covered in this book. He identifies four key aspects of the northern struggle for civil rights: a secular left that included various stripes [End Page 133] of radicals, religious communities, Black Nationalism, and the ethos of Cold War liberalism. The introduction is cogently written and accurately describes the book's contents, but it could be improved with a general discussion about the post-World War II history of New York City or a detailed exploration of the city's racial landscape. Civil Rights in New York City is especially strong in the themes of schools, society, and politics. In a separate essay, Clarence Taylor uncovers the history of radical teachers advancing an anti-racist curriculum during the Roosevelt era and revisits the political debate about school integration during the late 1960s. Daniel Perlstein's article offers a new interpretation of Bayard Rustin's role in the 1968 Ocean Hill-Brownsville crisis, while Martha Biondi poignantly writes about how City University's open enrollment policy expanded the Black and Latino middle class. Biondi's article is a standout within this group. She builds on solid but oft-neglected research about open admissions by adding her own oral histories with student activists of that period. The result is a convincing argument about the socially transformative power of higher education and a subtle reminder that working in schools is a way to make a living while making a difference. Mayoral leadership is another recurrent subject in this volume. Jerald Podair writes about Rudolph Giuliani's "One City, One Standard" policy and the rise of aggressive policing tactics that resulted in racially disproportionate use of "stop and frisk" tactics. In Podair's assessment, Giuliani's "race-neutral policy decisions led to race-skewed results" (215) in criminal justice, municipal spending priorities, and poverty relief. Wilbur C. Rich recounts racial conflagrations such as the Red Apple and Crown Heights incidents during the David Dinkins era. Likewise, many of the events discussed in this book directly pertain to...