To stand and fight : the struggle for civil rights in postwar New York City

Historians have thoroughly documented the experiences of those African Americans who lived in the South and worked to repeal Jim Crow laws. However, in this work, Biondi explores what she calls 'the struggle for Negro rights' in New York City, an exploration resulting in a stark reminder of the daily challenges facing blacks who lived in northern cities...With its detailed discussions of the American Labor Party, the Communist Party, Black Nationalism, Adam Clayton Powell Jr., W. E. B. Dubois, Roy Wilkins, and, especially, Paul Robeson, this work should be required reading for all historians interested in the post-WW II experience of African Americans in the urban North. -- T. D. Beal Choice 20040101 In this meticulously researched monograph, Biondi reminds the reader that the struggle for black civil rights was waged in the North before it was joined in the South. She documents the fight against racial discrimination in hiring, police brutality, housing segregation, lack of political representation, and inadequate schools in New York City between 1946 and 1954...Biondi's writing is crisp and direct. She introduces the reader to a host of activists whose efforts deserve to be remembered. Unfortunately, most of the causes they championed remain with us today. -- Paul T. Murray MultiCultural Review 20040501 By examining the fight for equality in New York...Biondi...contribute[s] further to our understanding of race in America, in general, and the nature and course of the civil rights movement, more specifically. -- Peter B. Levy Journal of American Ethnic History 20050501 Martha Biondi...has written a scathing critique of the polities of anti-Communism--not just its often-paranoid fantasies and rights violations. Biondi powerfully argues that the damaging legacy of anti-Communism lies in the ways it crippled a vision for a more just and equal New York City, and, by extension, the nation by destroying the careers of many of its most visionary citizens. Biondi's To Stand and Fight: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Postwar New York joins an emerging body of scholarship that overturns the Southern focus of Civil Rights history. Biondi takes us to New York--the home of the largest black community in the nation and, like its more notorious Southern counterparts, segregated in housing, schools, and most public and private accommodations. Biondi powerfully unravels hard and fast distinctions between Northern and Southern racism. Through an examination of numerous incidences of police brutality against African Americans in postwar NYC, the chapter on Northern lynching is a stark reminder of the state-sanctioned violence that ensured Northern segregation and inequality. -- Jeanne Theoharis Left History Biondi's book makes the counterintuitive point that the modern civil rights movement began in the north, not in the south. It did not begin with the Montgomery bus boycott; it did not begin with the Supreme Court desegregation decision of 1954. In the aftermath of World War II, the civil rights movement came alive in northern cities. She focuses on New York City. Biondi highlights the moment when racial egalitarianism became a core element of modern liberalism. It wasn't before. In the 1930s Roosevelt worked closely with racist, segregationist Southern Democrats who controlled important committees. He needed them to get measures through Congress. In other words, you could be a good New Deal liberal and be a total racist. Many liberals were racial egalitarians but many liberals were racists. Views on race were not part of the definition of liberalism. Today you can't be a racist and a liberal. -- Eric Foner The Browser 20110717 Read more...