African American Leaders Research Articles

The Risen Phoenix: Black Politics in the Post–Civil War South. by Luis-Alejandro Dinnella-Borrego

Reviewed by: The Risen Phoenix: Black Politics in the Post–Civil War South. by Luis-Alejandro Dinnella-Borrego Michael W. Fitzgerald (bio) The Risen Phoenix: Black Politics in the Post–Civil War South. By Luis-Alejandro Dinnella-Borrego. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2016. Pp. 233. Cloth, $49.50.) Let's accentuate the positive. This is a nuanced work reflecting on black congressmen during Reconstruction and its aftermath. Through an appreciative examination of six leaders, Dinnella-Borrego shows that they disagreed on a lot. But having determined to provide a deromanticized version of what these beleaguered legislators could accomplish, the author could have gone farther. These six congressmen were relatively prominent. They were James Rapier of Alabama, Josiah Walls of Florida, John Roy Lynch of Mississippi, Robert Smalls of South Carolina, John Mercer Langston of Virginia, and George White of North Carolina. They seem a plausible cross-section of the postwar era's twenty black House members. Still, the author never explains why he chose these individuals, beyond the existence of relatively ample evidence, three of them having written autobiographies. The tone is upbeat, with the author twice framing the study as an antecedent to the age of Obama. The author dissents from scholars such as Thomas Holt and Steven Hahn who see these leaders as elitists, locked into a political structure that diminished their ability to speak for the impoverished masses. "This critique is largely unjustified," Dinnella-Borrego concludes (6). The author emphasizes the relationship between these leaders and their grassroots constituency, rather than the machinations of Washington power politics. He also demonstrates quite tangibly that black congressmen were not monolithic, that especially after Redemption they differed on issue after issue as the wider political climate chilled. In general, this study approaches black officeholders with an appreciation of the practical constraints under which they operated. They were locked as junior partners in an interracial Republican Party, but they were not sellouts: "they did their jobs well" and their constituents took pride in them. Though they favored negotiation and compromise in their congressional roles, they also "functioned as national spokesmen for all African Americans" (216). This nuanced emphasis makes Dinnella-Borrego helpfully attentive to real-world constraints. In particular, he highlights the generational conflict between the older Republican officeholders and the younger generation of unelected black activists, like Ida Wells and T. Thomas Fortune, who saw themselves as protest leaders per se. And because this study extends beyond the normal Redemption endpoint of 1877, it enables exploration of the fluid political alignments of the 1880s and 1890s, as agrarian movements challenged the two-party order. This [End Page 341] is complicated political terrain, marked by apparent opportunistic shifts, and it is refreshing to see a knowledgeable take on how African American leaders responded. As should be evident, this book has much to recommend it. The discussion of what black congressmen actually did, and what the institutional constraints were, is refreshingly concrete. That said, having determined on a realist defense of these legislators, the author could have pursued that line more consistently. Dinnella-Borrego notes in his introduction that his subjects fought "for patronage and other government improvements," but he seldom recurs to the topic of government jobs again, once mentioning it in the context of corruption (6). This oversight understates the centrality of patronage, an abiding practical obsession of Reconstruction politics; patronage provided a tangible civil rights demand that tied black activists to the political structure. Nor does the author talk much about the related Reconstruction factional divisions—the Radical-versus-moderate conflicts—that facilitated black leaders' rise to elective office. One might expect discussion of the quadrennial presidential nomination process, which enabled black Republicans to maintain some modest bargaining power even after their party had abandoned Reconstruction. And the opposition Democrats did not "unwittingly" promote black officeholding through racial gerrymandering; they consciously did it to maintain control elsewhere and to hold their restive agrarian constituency in line (151). The book would have profited from a review of the published Ulysses S. Grant papers, especially since the congressmen Dinnella-Borrego examines so often acted as loyal foot soldiers for Republican administration policy. Given the Gilded Age context, and the Republicans...

Educational Reconstruction: African American Schools in the Urban South, 1865–1890 by Hilary Green

Reviewed by: Educational Reconstruction: African American Schools in the Urban South, 1865–1890 by Hilary Green Catherine A. Jones Educational Reconstruction: African American Schools in the Urban South, 1865–1890. Hilary Green. New York: Fordham University Press, 2016. ISBN 978-0-8232-7012-5, 272 pp., paper, $35.00. Although the alacrity with which freedpeople embraced postemancipation education is a familiar feature of Reconstruction narratives, schooling is often treated as peripheral to, and sometimes even at odds with, the real political action of the era. In this crisply written and resourcefully researched new book, Hilary Green offers a compelling new interpretation of postwar education as a key site of African American political mobilization during Reconstruction and beyond. Citizenship, rather than social control, frames her investigation, which offers new insight into postemancipation African American politics that highlights adaptability and an abiding commitment to education as a key feature of freedom. Green argues schools were important not only as sites of educational opportunity but also as centers of political action. Educational Reconstruction examines the creation of publicly funded schools in post–Civil War Richmond and Mobile. In its urban focus, Green's work joins that of Kate Masur and others in bringing new attention to the importance of cities as sites of postemancipation political experimentation. The dual city focus facilitates comparisons that demonstrate the real gains federal Reconstruction policies brought across the South while also illuminating the impact of highly local circumstances on educational access. Grounding her research in missionary, Freedmen's Bureau, and local governmental records enables Green to center her narrative on African American activism rather than a single organization. This in turn uncovers surprising continuity in African American influence on educational practices across the volatile political [End Page 204] period between 1865 and 1890. Her work challenges the idea that the withdrawal of the Freedmen's Bureau, and even Redemption, precipitated a declension in African American educational access. Instead Green demonstrates that leaders in Richmond and the more hostile context of Mobile continued to make real gains in access to schools, both as students and teachers, by effectively deploying a range of political practices including petitioning, rallies, and the strategic cultivation of white allies. The book details African American leadership in shepherding the transition from northern management of freedpeople's schools to local control in ways that preserved many gains made during Reconstruction. Focusing on the ensuing struggles over public schools, Green develops a fine-grained portrait of political negotiations within fractured local communities with little federal oversight. Green's work focuses on not only educational access, but also the vision African Americans nurtured regarding its relationship to freedom. She argues that access and quality education were consistent objectives shaping postwar public schools as well as the political actions that made them possible. For example, African Americans in Richmond overcame their white allies' insistence that teacher training should come only after broad elementary education to establish the Richmond Colored Normal School, which in turn provided quality teachers to black schools. Such institutionalized gains fostered counter-memories that extended Reconstruction's inclusive vision of citizenship beyond its nominal end. Green argues the whole complex of practices that developed around schools "unified urban African Americans around a collective identity and culture reflective of their free status and Confederate defeat" (3). The book's emphasis on unity is convincing but also leaves the consequences of the schools' exclusions for future exploration. For example, additional scholarship could explore children within each city and from surrounding communities. Similarly, a richer discussion of how classroom content differed among schools would have further contextualized her contention that access mattered more to African Americans than the educational model to which schools adhered. Green provides tantalizing glimpses of grassroots political action, from women demanding teaching posts to schoolchildren protesting Confederate celebrations, that suggest further investigation of postwar schooling might reveal the persistence of a radically democratized politics. In addition to providing a nuanced account of the establishment of public schools in Richmond and Mobile, Educational Reconstruction makes important contributions to the ongoing reconsideration of Reconstruction's [End Page 205] periodization and impact. It demonstrates that Reconstruction mattered profoundly for postwar politics long after 1877. Green argues the 1890...

“The most patient of animals, next to the ass:” Jan Smuts, Howard University, and African American Leadership, 1930

Former South African Prime Minister Jan Smuts’s 1930 European and North American tour included a series of interactions with diasporic African and African American activists and intelligentsia. Among Smuts’s many remarks stands a particular speech he delivered in New York City, when he called Africans “the most patient of all animals, next to the ass.” Naturally, this and other comments touched off a firestorm of controversy surrounding Smuts, his visit, and segregationist South Africa’s laws. Utilizing news coverage, correspondence, and recollections of the trip, this article uses his visit as a lens into both African American relations with Africa and white American foundation work toward the continent and, especially, South Africa. It argues that the 1930 visit represents an early example of black internationalism and solidarity, reflecting a shift from sociocultural connections between Africa and the diaspora to creating political movements on behalf of African people. To contextualize this visit, we assess events surrounding a meeting that the Phelps-Stokes Fund organized for Smuts at Howard University, using this as a lens into the two disparate, yet interlocked, communities.

“Women and Girls in Jeopardy by His False Testimony”: Charles Dancy, Urban Policing, and Black Women in New York City during the 1920s

Troubling partnerships between the New York City Police Department (NYPD) and criminal informants during the mid-1920s adversely impacted urban African American women’s daily lives. Part of multiple hierarchies of municipal corruption, undercover surveillance operations represented one of many apparatuses law enforcers employed to criminalize black women’s ordinary behavior, to reinforce Progressive era images of black female criminality and promiscuity, and to deny women of their personhood and civil rights. Black New Yorker and criminal informant Charles Dancy, identified by local black newspapers as a vicious con artist and serial rapist, figured prominently in undercover police operations. Dancy falsely identified black women as sex workers and had them arrested, and in the process sexually assaulted women. New York blacks were outraged by some NYPD members’ use of informants as well as black women’s erroneous legal confinement. Situating informant work within the context of police brutality, racial inequity, and the denial of American citizenship, New York African American race leaders, newspaper editors, and ordinary folks devised and took part in resistance strategies that contested police surveillance operations and spoke on behalf of those who were subjected to state sanctioned violence.

‘I Have a Drone’: Internet memes and the politics of culture

Abstract Comparisons between slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr and US President Barack Obama are commonplace in news and political discourse. This article takes up this comparison by way of a critical analysis of an Internet meme that emerged at the time of Obama’s second inauguration. Specifically, it analyses the ‘I Have a Drone’ meme – an unusually provocative example of digital culture that calls out Barack Obama on his targeted killing programme – with an eye towards better understanding the role political memes play in the compression of complex ideas into smaller packets, and the implications thereof for public discourse and political engagement. This discussion is located in relation to contemporary theorizing on Internet memes, with an emphasis on the cultural politics enacted within and through this emergent form of participatory culture. Throughout, it is argued that the ‘I Have a Drone’ meme challenges the rhetorical equivalence between the two African American leaders, thereby registering and articulating popular opposition to Obama’s drone wars. Doing so, this article highlights the creative and incisive fashion in which activists, graphic artists and others appropriate, challenge and reconfigure news and political discourse in digital space.

Book Review: The Imposing Preacher: Samuel DeWitt Proctor and Black Public Faith

The Imposing Preacher: Samuel DeWitt Proctor and Public By Adam L. Bond. Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 2013. xi + 247 pp. $29.00 (paper).In this timely book, Adam Bond acquaints the reader with the Reverend Samuel DeWitt Proctor, African American minister, educator, and humani- tarian, acknowledging parallels in Proctor's biography and that of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Despite the fact that Proctor did not receive the notoriety of King or other prominent African American peers, Bond maintains that Proctor is perhaps one of the greatest ethicists, scholars, and theologians of his generation.Following a short biographical introduction, Bond moves through the opening chapter unpacking Black Public Faith. Here Bond juxtaposes Proctor's witness to the black public faith tradition with that of other prominent African American leaders and preachers. Proctor saw himself as a bridge, a pragmatic harmonizer, who represented the values and beliefs that shaped the civil rights movement. Bond demonstrates how Proctors theo-political understandings differed from those of black liberation theology, soul theology, rainbow theology, and the womanist and feminist movements. Here the reader gains insights into the works of James Cone, J. Deotis Roberts, Katie G. Cannon, Delores Williams, Jesse Jackson, Jr., Edward V. Hill, and James Melvin Washington. For Proctor and all these leaders, the common enemy was racism.Where chapter 2 speaks of Proctor's foundational training as a pastor and preacher, chapter 3 delves into his formation as a public theologian. Bond surveys Proctor's theological positions on various topics, including orthodoxy and fundamentalism, science and creation, the authority of the Bible, the immanence and transcendence of God, and the church as advocate for society. Chapter 4 discusses Proctor's defense of black humanity and the notion that everybody is God's somebody, even in an America where and race divide our republic. This chapter articulates the imposing preacher's preaching voice, a voice now silenced for nearly twenty years, which encapsulated the same issues concerning race and as continue to exist in America today. Through these pages, many readers will hear one of the today's familiar slogans-Black Lives Matter-echo in their ears.As noted throughout the Imposing Preacher, Proctor often lectured, preached, and wrote concerning race and in America. Proctor believed racism is a community thing. Bond charts out Proctor's four stages of African American existence in America: disintegration, alienation, imitation (or acculturation), and reintegration. Here, Bond provides a summary review of one of Proctor's first books, The Young Negro in America (1966). Bond paints a passionate Proctor who spent most of his life preaching, teaching, and advocating for an integrated, and prejudice-free society that affirms persons of all races (p. …

Rearticulating New York Times v. Sullivan as a Social Duty to Journalists

During the frenzied run of presidential primaries in 2016, Republican nominee Donald Trump vowed to “open up” libel laws to make suing the media easier. This apparent attempt to resurrect seditious libel brought a flurry of debate about how American libel laws might be altered in this context. “We are going to have people sue you like you’ve never got sued before,” Trump said. This article seeks to rearticulate the landmark New York Times v. Sullivan decision as a case about social duty and the duty that is owed to journalists in an increasingly contentious political climate. I argue that protecting this right to criticize public officials and public figures is as important as ever in our democratic system. Sullivan was a case about civil rights, about the right of African-American leaders and the media to cover and criticize how the police behaved in the 1960s when faced with the social revolution of the civil rights movement. This essay also focuses on three previously unstudied cases filed by police officers in the New York area in the 1960s. Sullivan secured our right to speak without a vindictive government bearing down on us via our legal system, but other cases decided outside the national spotlight suggest how that right was further cemented by the interaction of the media and the civil rights movement. Be it the brutality of police 50 years ago and today, or coverage of presidential candidates, I argue that journalists and the public are owed this right.

The Clinton Administration and Africa: Perspective of the Congressional Black Caucus and TransAfrica

Surprising to some, African American leaders have expressed a relatively high level of dissatisfaction with the Clinton administration's policies toward Africa both before and after President Clinton's historic journey to the African continent in 1998.1 Well-publicized protests against the administration's Nigerian policy were supported by TransAfrica, many members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), and other organizations with large numbers of African American supporters, such as the Washington Office on Africa (WOA). Likewise, both TransAfrica and many members of the CBC were sufficiently unhappy with Clinton's approach that they boycotted the 1994 White House Conference on Africa. More recently, the CBC refused to take an official stance on the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act, and over 30 percent of its members voted against the act in the House of Representatives. Given the contrast between an African policy perceived popularly as innovative and supportive of Africa, and the fairly high level of dissension and disapproval among African American leaders toward that policy, it is particularly worth exploring African American perspectives about Clinton's African policies.

“Born Black and Male”: Counseling leaders’ self-discovery of strengths

Africentric/Afrocentric psychology frames the interview findings on five African-American male leaders in a racial, ethnic, and culturally diverse counseling association. The consensual qualitative research method was used to extrapolate themes from the five interviews. Africentric cultural strengths suggested in the themes are (a) autogeny, (b) primacy of the person in the context of community, (c) consubstantiality of primordial substance, (d) perpetual evolution, and (e) living forever. Two themes related to counseling practice are (f) social justice and (g) cultural empathy. Common trends in statements across interviews are illustrated with rich quotations and summaries. Although the framework of continental African world view facilitated understanding a few African-American male counseling leaders, the study evidences a larger universal human dimension of individuals’ pain, resilience, self-discovery of strengths, and leadership bound to a collective self-concept by which leadership can take place both individually and collectively.

African American leadership: a concise reference guide

African American leadership: a concise reference guide

Forging African American Minds: Black Pragmatism, “intelligent labor,” and a new look at industrial education, 1879–1900

ABSTRACTThis article examines black thought and black ideas about racial consciousness after Reconstruction in order to rethink the way African American leaders conceived the relationship between work and intellectual achievement in the late nineteenth century. Conventional scholarly accounts of the politics of black knowledge and education – including the still very prevalent paradigm of industrial and classical education – have missed a fascinating transformation of thought among many African American leaders after 1879 who sought to reinvent black identity. At the root of this transformation were shifting ideas about the black worker and a new industrial economy. The leaders who represented the transformation embraced progressive, pragmatist, and very modern approaches to intellectual cultivation – approaches that were more in line with theories of manual training and object-learning than with classical education. In other words, the intellectual rationales for industrial education among black educators were as important as the economic and practical ones. Those rationales were articulated not just by more conservative black voices intent on fitting into a new industrial order, but also by black progressives and radicals who hoped to cultivate black “self-consciousness,” vigorous engagement with the “real world,” and intellectual independence from white norms.

South Side Girls: Growing Up in The Great Migration by Marcia Chatelain

SOUTH SIDE GIRLS: Growing Up in The Great Migration. By Marcia Chatelain. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 2015.Historians studying the African American experience have written extensively on the complexities of the First and Second Great Migrations. Studies by Darlene Clark Hine, Joe Trotter, James Grossman, Luther Adams, and others demonstrate the various socioeconomic and political and personal factors drawing millions of black southerners to urban northern, southern, and midwestern communities. Much of what scholars already know about African Americans' migratory journeys and adjustment to urban terrains is indeed well documented and primarily centered on the experiences of adults. Filling a much-needed historical gap within the subfields of African American, urban, and women and childhood studies, scholar Marcia Chatelain's South Side Girls provides a nuanced interpretation of black migration.South Side Girls situates African American girls at the center of the Great Migration, unmasking their less familiar accounts of settlement to one of the nation's most fascinating cities. Focusing on between 1910 and 1940, Chatelain maintains that the city's shifting socioeconomic and political landscapes, as well as black city dwellers' real and imagined anxieties about city living, impacted African American parents, community leaders, and social scientists' perceptions of black girlhood. Constructing vulnerable images of urban black girls, Chicago community leaders scrutinized black girls' behavior, evaluated their choices, and assessed their possibilities as part of a larger conversation about what urbanization ultimately meant for black citizens (2). For middle-class leaders black girlhood, often discussed within the context of racial uplift and respectable politics, symbolized both promise and problems. In turn, adults' concerns about adolescent females shaped reform campaigns and programs aimed at employing, educating, and protecting girls.Chatelain makes several important interventions. She offers a thorough examination of Chicago's less familiar African American political reformers. Profoundly committed to the socioeconomic advancement of black girls, social workers and activists-such as industrial school founder Amanda Smith, black sorority members, Black Camp Fire Advocates, and National Youth Administration Resident School for Girls employees-launched educational, vocational, and recreational programs. These reform movements situated black girls' socioeconomic needs at the center of broader African American political agendas focusing on the construction of respectable families and communities. …

Букер Т. Вашингтон в поиске взаимопонимания между двумя расами в США (конец XIX — начало XX вв.)

The article is focused on the philosophy and the practical actions of Booker T. Washington (1856- 1915) — the most significant African-American leader of the late XIX — early XX centuries. The author analyzes the formation of attitudes and life principles of this figure, his search of peaceful interaction of white and black people, in conditions of the restriction of civil and political rights of the African-Americans in the territory of the southern states after the end of the Reconstruction in 1879. The temporary renouncement by the black population of the struggle for political equality in return for socio-economic opportunities, that was the main idea of the Washington’s “ideology of adaptation”, became a compromise in the relationship between the two races. The author also focuses his attention on the Washington’s educational program, his economic development strategy of the black people, and his attitude to the racial discrimination, as well as the reasons that led the “ideology of adaptation” to the failure in attempt to stop the further offensive racist legislation.

THE POWER OF AMIRI BARAKA’S POLITICAL THOUGHTS TO THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN MOVEMENT IN AMERICA

Imamu Amiri Baraka is an artist, activist, and also an African-American leader who was born in Newark, New Jersey. Throughout his prolific career in American literature, he was able to generate some important political issues in defending the Black Power which was a perpetuating challenge for African-American intellectuals in the 1960s-1970s.This research is written under American Studies discipline, which takes politics to gain an African-American politics’ point of view, sociology to explore the theory of race and social conflict in the United States, and cultural studies to understand the struggle of African-Americans towards white Americans.The findings of this research show Baraka’s adeptness in his dual role as artist and politician through his political thoughts which has a never-ending development of his political consciousness. Baraka’s intellectual and political thought formation has moved through verydistinct stages and they are: Black Cultural Nationalism, Black Solidarity and Black Marxism. His final political stage has a broader consciousness that reveals capitalism in the Western world and this revelation of capitalism declared its theme of death and despair, moral and social corruption with its concomitant decrying Western values and ethics, the struggle against selfhatred, and a growing ethnic awareness.Keywords: Amiri Baraka, black power, political thought, African-American politics, andconflict

African American women principals: heeding the call to serve as conduits for transforming urban school communities

African American women leaders are often found in urban schools that have been exhausted of resources and lack support. However, due to their disproportionate representation in urban schools, African American women principals have become adept at uniting and engaging stakeholders in marginalized school settings into action. The intent for this research project was to illuminate commonalities of African American women leaders of urban school environments and understand how they make sense of their leadership roles. We conducted a focus group interview with three African American women principals of urban schools. Themes that emerged include: Heeding the Call and Staying the Spiritual Course; Understanding Individual Students, Families, and Communities for Change; and Caring for the Human Condition. Findings have implications for leadership preparation and practice.

The Historical Presidency: In the Inner Circle: Anna Rosenberg and Franklin D. Roosevelt's Presidency, 1941‐1945

Scholars have long noted how President Franklin D. Roosevelt used a network of formal and informal advisors and executive agencies. Few if any, however, have noted the advisory role played by Anna Rosenberg during the war years. Using both personal and presidential papers, this article explores the diverse ways that Rosenberg assisted Roosevelt, including conveying the demands of African American leaders, supervising troubled agencies, and most important, serving as the president's alter ego in labor‐management relations.

Perceptions of Science Education among African American and White Evangelicals: A Texas Case Study

Evangelicals have been highlighted at the intersections of religion, science, and education, yet little is known about how evangelicals perceive public science education and how these perceptions compare across racial lines. Here we analyze how African American and white evangelicals view science education through 40 in-depth interviews collected from two evangelical congregations in Texas. Without raising the topic of evolution, we find that African American leaders, white leaders, and white laity engaged in faith-based, evolution-contesting discourse, but African American laity rarely framed science education in faith-based ways. For them, science education was often linked to educational resources or was distant from their lived experiences. Our findings clarify disjuncture and overlap among African American and white evangelicals by exploring perceptions that challenge and affirm the public institution of science education in different ways. Our conclusion stresses the need to examine perceptions of science and education among religious subgroups differentiated along social and historical lines.

The Leadership Challenge of Overcoming the Scourge of Racism: The Coping and Mitigative Strategies Used by Leaders

Race is not a leadership challenge in culturally monolithic societies. In the United States, Caucasian leaders do not have to deal with the challenge as much as their African American counterparts. Society seems to accept their role as leaders more readily than they accept Black, Hispanic, Asian or other minority leaders. Leaders from these groups have to deal with an added challenge of coping with racism. This paper focuses on this challenge of racism, especially among African American Leaders, and examines how successful African American leaders cope or mitigate this challenge, while seeking to be effective in their leadership roles. Depersonalization of self and migrating to a group conceptualization is a common strategy that African American and minority leaders use effectively, but it can be tiring in the long run, especially if the leader wants to be at peace with his or her conscience.

Digital History: Using the Internet to Enhance African American Studies in the Secondary School

The authors discuss how high school students participated in a unit in which they learned about African American history in a 1:1 computer classroom—in particular, how they were able to use digital history to learn about a variety of African American leaders who are not frequently covered in the traditional American History textbook. In addition, this article discusses how the students were challenged to think deeply about the African American experience by answering focus questions. The students also researched African American history topics and shared their findings by producing projects that they posted to the Internet.

Renaissance and Retrenchment in the 1970s

Between World War II and 1970, Pittsburgh’s Democratic Party hand-selected the city’s mayors, with one exception: Pete Flaherty. After four years on City Council and a close relationship with Party leaders, Flaherty rejected first an invitation to be Mayor Joseph Barr’s designated successor, beholden to the Party for campaign money, and a subsequent attempt by Allegheny Conference on Community Development (ACCD) members to lure him onto the Republican ticket. He campaigned instead as an unendorsed, independent Democrat and beat the machine candidate in the Democratic primary; in the 1969 general election, he ran on the platform that he was “nobody’s boy.” He financed his campaign through donations, launched innovative billboard and newspaper advertising campaigns, and won handily. Four years later, after alienating the Democratic Party, organized labor, his predecessor, most of the City Council, the police, the firemen, local CEOs, African American leaders, and both of the city’s major newspapers, Flaherty ran unopposed for a second term, having secured both the Republican and Democratic nominations. The joke around town was that “nobody likes Pete except the voters.”1 Popular narratives of Pittsburgh’s urban development since 1945 most often characterize Flaherty’s 1970–1977 mayoral tenure as a temporary disruption of perpetual Renaissance and relentless progress. Flaherty was a passionate critic of the Renaissance’s top–down, corporateoriented approach to urban development and the distribution of public resources, and he set out