Shares the voices of students speaking out against the failures of urban education "Our schools suck." This is how many young people of color call attention to the kind of public education they are receiving. In cities across the nation, many students are trapped in under-funded, mismanaged and unsafe schools. Yet, a number of scholars and of public figures have shifted attention away from the persistence of school segregation to lambaste the values of young people themselves. Our Schools Suck forcefully challenges this assertion by giving voice to the compelling stories of African American and Latino students who attend under-resourced inner-city schools, where guidance counselors and AP classes are limited and security guards and metal detectors are plentiful-and grow disheartened by a public conversation that continually casts them as the problem with urban schools. By showing that young people are deeply committed to education but often critical of the kind of education they are receiving, this book highlights the dishonesty of public claims that they do not value education. Ultimately, these powerful student voices remind us of the ways we have shirked our public responsibility to create excellent schools. True school reform requires no less than a new civil rights movement, where adults join with young people to ensure an equal education for each and every student.

Did American racism originate in the liberal North? An inquiry into the system of institutionalized racism created by Northern Jim Crow Jim Crow was not a regional sickness, it was a national cancer. Even at the high point of twentieth century liberalism in the North, Jim Crow racism hid in plain sight. Perpetuated by colorblind arguments about "cultures of poverty," policies focused more on black criminality than black equality. Procedures that diverted resources in education, housing, and jobs away from poor black people turned ghettos and prisons into social pandemics. Americans in the North made this history. They tried to unmake it, too. Liberalism, rather than lighting the way to vanquish the darkness of the Jim Crow North gave racism new and complex places to hide. The twelve original essays in this anthology unveil Jim Crow's many strange careers in the North. They accomplish two goals: first, they show how the Jim Crow North worked as a system to maintain social, economic, and political inequality in the nation's most liberal places; and second, they chronicle how activists worked to undo the legal, economic, and social inequities born of Northern Jim Crow policies, practices, and ideas. The book ultimately dispels the myth that the South was the birthplace of American racism, and presents a compelling argument that American racism actually originated in the North.

View the Table of Contents. Read the Introduction.

aWith this book, Marchevsky and Theoharis make a distinct contribution to the welfare reform debate by addressing a topic that has received less attention in the literature, namely how welfare reforms have impacted immigrant. "Not Working" is particularly timely as immigrants become more visible as they move to less traditional U.S. regions to find work and the immigration debate rages.a
l"Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare"

"Original and insightful. Not Working is a powerful book, connecting theories of the state, citizenship, and globalization with first rate ethnography. It is an instant classic and will remain the definitive book on immigrant women and welfare reform for some time."
--Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, author of "DomA(c)stica: Immigrant Workers Cleaning and Caring in the Shadows of Affluence"

aThis is a scholarly, professional critique of social science research paradigms generally, and poverty knowledge industry and associated applied policy research in particular: a
-- Choice: Highly recommended.

"A smart, engaging, and groundbreaking study that exposes the racist underpinnings of welfare reform. A model of stellar scholarship and a must read for anyone seeking to understand poverty in relation to the meaning of American citizenship today."
--Arlene Davila, author of "Barrio Dreams: Puerto Ricans, Latinos, and the Neoliberal City"

"This highly significant contribution assures that Latina immigrants will no longer be invisible in scholarly research on welfare reform. This superb ethnography establishes a clear connection to the political, legal, and economic realities that is needed inreassessing the success stories of welfare reform. It should be read by all those concerned with social inequality, poverty, and justice in America."
--Mary Romero, author of "Maid in the U.S.A"

"Not Working is an empirically rich and theoretically sophisticated study of welfare reform's deleterious effects on immigrant Latinas struggling to make a life for themselves and their children. This is an incredibly compelling ethnography."
--Sanford F. Schram, author of "After Welfare: The Culture of Postindustrial Social Policy"

aBy documenting the harsh effects of welfare reform, Not Working exposes the bipartisan rhetoric about apersonal responsibilitya for what it is-- a cover for ten years of attacks on the poor.a
--"International Socialist Review"

Not Working chronicles the devastating effects of the 1996 welfare reform legislation that ended welfare as we know it. For those who now receive public assistance, "work" means pleading with supervisors for full-time hours, juggling ever-changing work schedules, and shuffling between dead-end jobs that leave one physically and psychically exhausted.

Through vivid story-telling and pointed analysis, Not Working profiles the day-to-day struggles of Mexican immigrant women in the Los Angeles area, showing the increased vulnerability they face in the welfare office and labor market. The new "work first" policies now enacted impose time limits and mandate work requirements for those receiving public assistance, yet fail to offer real job training or needed childcare options, ultimately causing many families to fall deeper below the poverty line.

Not Working shows that the new "welfare-to-work" regime has produced tremendousinstability and insecurity for these women and their children. Moreover, the authors argue that the new politics of welfare enable greater infringements of rights and liberty for many of America's most vulnerable and constitute a crucial component of the broader assault on American citizenship. In short, the new welfare is not working.

View the Table of Contents. Read the Foreword.

"The thirteen essays in this important collection examine grass-roots struggles for racial justice throughout the United States from 1940-1980...Read together, these essays remind us that activism changes people as much as society."
--"Journal of American History"

"The essays in "Groundwork" assert individually and collectively that at the root of any national movement for change are local activists working from the bottom up to change their communities first, then the world. This excellent and invigorating collection is crucial reading in an election year."
--Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Director, W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, and author of "America Behind the Color Line: Dialogues with African Americans"

"A major contribution to the ever expanding historical literature of the modern African American freedom struggle. This book brings together outstanding examples of detailed and thoughtful studies of northern as well as southern local movements."
--Clayborne Carson, Professor of History and Director, Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project, Stanford University

"Brilliantly conveys the vibrancy and creativity of community-based movements that transformed America's racial and civic landscape in the decades following World War II."
--Patricia Sullivan, author of "Freedom Writer: Virginia Foster Durr, Letters from the Civil Rights Years"

"Required reading for anyone who wants to understand what the Civil Rights Movement actually was - a national movement conceived and executed by local people in cities and towns across this country. They are the people who made the movement that madeMartin Luther King, Jr.--not the other way around."
--Julian Bond, Professor of History, University of Virginia, American University, and Chairman of the NAACP

"This work demonstrates again and again how local movements complicate the standard civil rights narrative of nonviolence, black power, busing, and the nature of leadership."
--Tracy E. K'Meyer, Associate Professor US History, University of Louisville

"These essays enrich understanding of the valiant struggles to make real the promise of a more democratic US."
--"CHOICE," highly recommended

Over the last several years, the traditional narrative of the civil rights movement as largely a southern phenomenon, organized primarily by male leaders, that roughly began with the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott and ended with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, has been complicated by studies that root the movement in smaller communities across the country. These local movements had varying agendas and organizational development, geared to the particular circumstances, resources, and regions in which they operated. Local civil rights activists frequently worked in tandem with the national civil rights movement but often functioned autonomously from--and sometimes even at odds with--the national movement.

Together, the pathbreaking essays in Groundwork teach us that local civil rights activity was a vibrant component of the larger civil rights movement, and contributed greatly to its national successes. Individually, the pieces offer dramatic new insights about the civil rights movement, such as the fact that a militant black youth organization in Milwaukee was led by a white Catholic priest and in Cambridge, Maryland, by amiddle-aged black woman; that a group of middle-class, professional black women spearheaded Jackson, Mississippi's movement for racial justice and made possible the continuation of the Freedom Rides, and that, despite protests from national headquarters, the Brooklyn chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality staged a dramatic act of civil disobedience at the 1964 World's Fair in New York.

No previous volume has enabled readers to examine several different local movements together, and in so doing, Groundwork forges a far more comprehensive vision of the black freedom movement.

Newsweek, Lit Hub, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and The Atlanta Journal Constitution pick Race Man by Julian Bond as one of their Most-Anticipated Books of 2020! "This compilation of works by social activist and civil rights leader Julian Bond should be required reading in 2020."-Juliana Rose Pignataro, Newsweek "Bond's essays, speeches and interviews were powerful weapons in his lifelong fight for civil rights."-The New York Times "Justice and equality was the mission that spanned his life. Julian Bond helped change this country for the better. And what better way to be remembered than that."-President Barack Obama An inspiring, historic collection of writings from one of America's most important civil rights leaders. No one in the United States did more to advance the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. than Julian Bond. Race Man-a collection of his speeches, articles, interviews, and letters-constitutes an unrivaled history of the life and times of one of America's most trusted freedom fighters, offering unfiltered access to his prophetic voice on a wide variety of social issues, including police brutality, abortion, and same-sex marriage. A man who broke race barriers and set precedents throughout his life in politics; co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center and long-time chair of the NAACP; Julian Bond was a leader and a visionary who built bridges between the black civil rights movement and other freedom movements-especially for LGBTQ and women's rights. As we enter the third decade of the twenty-first century, there is no better time to return to Bond's works and words, many of them published here for the first time. "Endlessly grateful for this collection of work that shows the expansive nature of Julian Bond's ideas of black liberation, and how those ideas are woven into the fabric of both resistance and uplift. Race Man is the map of a journey that was not only struggle and not only triumph."-Hanif Abdurraqib, author of They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us: Essays "Race Man is the essential collection of Julian Bond's wisdom-and required reading for the organizers and leaders who follow in his footsteps today."-Marian Wright Edelman, President Emerita, Children's Defense Fund "Race Man is a staggering collection that offers a genealogy of Bond's freedom-oriented politics and soul work as captured in his written words. Race Man is a book that looks back and speaks forward. It is a timely example of what movement building can look like when servant leaders refuse to leave the most vulnerable out of their visions for Black freedom. We need that reminder, like never before, today."-Darnell L. Moore, author of No Ashes in the Fire: Coming of Age Black & Free in America " [An] essential volume that will appeal to a broad audience of readers interested in the civil rights movement and human rights overall . . ."-Library Journal, Starred Review "Bond's years as an activist also offer a guide through the intellectual and political history of the left in the second half of the 20th century . . . Bond's essays capture the intellectual world that inspired him and that he helped inspire in turn."-Robert Greene II, The Nation

Uncovers the often overlooked stories of the women who shaped the black freedom struggle The story of the black freedom struggle in America has been overwhelmingly male-centric, starring leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and Huey Newton. With few exceptions, black women have been perceived as supporting actresses; as behind-the-scenes or peripheral activists, or rank and file party members. But what about Vicki Garvin, a Brooklyn-born activist who became a leader of the National Negro Labor Council and guide to Malcolm X on his travels through Africa? What about Shirley Chisholm, the first black Congresswoman? From Rosa Parks and Esther Cooper Jackson, to Shirley Graham DuBois and Assata Shakur, a host of women demonstrated a lifelong commitment to radical change, embracing multiple roles to sustain the movement, founding numerous groups and mentoring younger activists. Helping to create the groundwork and continuity for the movement by operating as local organizers, international mobilizers, and charismatic leaders, the stories of the women profiled in Want to Start a Revolution? help shatter the pervasive and imbalanced image of women on the sidelines of the black freedom struggle. Contributors: Margo Natalie Crawford, Prudence Cumberbatch, Johanna Fernandez, Diane C. Fujino, Dayo F. Gore, Joshua Guild, Gerald Horne, Ericka Huggins, Angela D. LeBlanc-Ernest, Joy James, Erik McDuffie, Premilla Nadasen, Sherie M. Randolph, James Smethurst, Margaret Stevens, and Jeanne Theoharis.

Did American racism originate in the liberal North? An inquiry into the system of institutionalized racism created by Northern Jim Crow Jim Crow was not a regional sickness, it was a national cancer. Even at the high point of twentieth century liberalism in the North, Jim Crow racism hid in plain sight. Perpetuated by colorblind arguments about "cultures of poverty," policies focused more on black criminality than black equality. Procedures that diverted resources in education, housing, and jobs away from poor black people turned ghettos and prisons into social pandemics. Americans in the North made this history. They tried to unmake it, too. Liberalism, rather than lighting the way to vanquish the darkness of the Jim Crow North gave racism new and complex places to hide. The twelve original essays in this anthology unveil Jim Crow's many strange careers in the North. They accomplish two goals: first, they show how the Jim Crow North worked as a system to maintain social, economic, and political inequality in the nation's most liberal places; and second, they chronicle how activists worked to undo the legal, economic, and social inequities born of Northern Jim Crow policies, practices, and ideas. The book ultimately dispels the myth that the South was the birthplace of American racism, and presents a compelling argument that American racism actually originated in the North.

Uncovers the often overlooked stories of the women who shaped the black freedom struggle The story of the black freedom struggle in America has been overwhelmingly male-centric, starring leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and Huey Newton. With few exceptions, black women have been perceived as supporting actresses; as behind-the-scenes or peripheral activists, or rank and file party members. But what about Vicki Garvin, a Brooklyn-born activist who became a leader of the National Negro Labor Council and guide to Malcolm X on his travels through Africa? What about Shirley Chisholm, the first black Congresswoman? From Rosa Parks and Esther Cooper Jackson, to Shirley Graham DuBois and Assata Shakur, a host of women demonstrated a lifelong commitment to radical change, embracing multiple roles to sustain the movement, founding numerous groups and mentoring younger activists. Helping to create the groundwork and continuity for the movement by operating as local organizers, international mobilizers, and charismatic leaders, the stories of the women profiled in Want to Start a Revolution? help shatter the pervasive and imbalanced image of women on the sidelines of the black freedom struggle. Contributors: Margo Natalie Crawford, Prudence Cumberbatch, Johanna Fernandez, Diane C. Fujino, Dayo F. Gore, Joshua Guild, Gerald Horne, Ericka Huggins, Angela D. LeBlanc-Ernest, Joy James, Erik McDuffie, Premilla Nadasen, Sherie M. Randolph, James Smethurst, Margaret Stevens, and Jeanne Theoharis.

Shares the voices of students speaking out against the failures of urban education "Our schools suck." This is how many young people of color call attention to the kind of public education they are receiving. In cities across the nation, many students are trapped in under-funded, mismanaged and unsafe schools. Yet, a number of scholars and of public figures have shifted attention away from the persistence of school segregation to lambaste the values of young people themselves. Our Schools Suck forcefully challenges this assertion by giving voice to the compelling stories of African American and Latino students who attend under-resourced inner-city schools, where guidance counselors and AP classes are limited and security guards and metal detectors are plentiful-and grow disheartened by a public conversation that continually casts them as the problem with urban schools. By showing that young people are deeply committed to education but often critical of the kind of education they are receiving, this book highlights the dishonesty of public claims that they do not value education. Ultimately, these powerful student voices remind us of the ways we have shirked our public responsibility to create excellent schools. True school reform requires no less than a new civil rights movement, where adults join with young people to ensure an equal education for each and every student.

View the Table of Contents. Read the Introduction.

aWith this book, Marchevsky and Theoharis make a distinct contribution to the welfare reform debate by addressing a topic that has received less attention in the literature, namely how welfare reforms have impacted immigrant. "Not Working" is particularly timely as immigrants become more visible as they move to less traditional U.S. regions to find work and the immigration debate rages.a
l"Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare"

"Original and insightful. Not Working is a powerful book, connecting theories of the state, citizenship, and globalization with first rate ethnography. It is an instant classic and will remain the definitive book on immigrant women and welfare reform for some time."
--Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, author of "DomA(c)stica: Immigrant Workers Cleaning and Caring in the Shadows of Affluence"

aThis is a scholarly, professional critique of social science research paradigms generally, and poverty knowledge industry and associated applied policy research in particular: a
-- Choice: Highly recommended.

"A smart, engaging, and groundbreaking study that exposes the racist underpinnings of welfare reform. A model of stellar scholarship and a must read for anyone seeking to understand poverty in relation to the meaning of American citizenship today."
--Arlene Davila, author of "Barrio Dreams: Puerto Ricans, Latinos, and the Neoliberal City"

"This highly significant contribution assures that Latina immigrants will no longer be invisible in scholarly research on welfare reform. This superb ethnography establishes a clear connection to the political, legal, and economic realities that is needed inreassessing the success stories of welfare reform. It should be read by all those concerned with social inequality, poverty, and justice in America."
--Mary Romero, author of "Maid in the U.S.A"

"Not Working is an empirically rich and theoretically sophisticated study of welfare reform's deleterious effects on immigrant Latinas struggling to make a life for themselves and their children. This is an incredibly compelling ethnography."
--Sanford F. Schram, author of "After Welfare: The Culture of Postindustrial Social Policy"

aBy documenting the harsh effects of welfare reform, Not Working exposes the bipartisan rhetoric about apersonal responsibilitya for what it is-- a cover for ten years of attacks on the poor.a
--"International Socialist Review"

Not Working chronicles the devastating effects of the 1996 welfare reform legislation that ended welfare as we know it. For those who now receive public assistance, "work" means pleading with supervisors for full-time hours, juggling ever-changing work schedules, and shuffling between dead-end jobs that leave one physically and psychically exhausted.

Through vivid story-telling and pointed analysis, Not Working profiles the day-to-day struggles of Mexican immigrant women in the Los Angeles area, showing the increased vulnerability they face in the welfare office and labor market. The new "work first" policies now enacted impose time limits and mandate work requirements for those receiving public assistance, yet fail to offer real job training or needed childcare options, ultimately causing many families to fall deeper below the poverty line.

Not Working shows that the new "welfare-to-work" regime has produced tremendousinstability and insecurity for these women and their children. Moreover, the authors argue that the new politics of welfare enable greater infringements of rights and liberty for many of America's most vulnerable and constitute a crucial component of the broader assault on American citizenship. In short, the new welfare is not working.

View the Table of Contents. Read the Foreword.

"The thirteen essays in this important collection examine grass-roots struggles for racial justice throughout the United States from 1940-1980...Read together, these essays remind us that activism changes people as much as society."
--"Journal of American History"

"The essays in "Groundwork" assert individually and collectively that at the root of any national movement for change are local activists working from the bottom up to change their communities first, then the world. This excellent and invigorating collection is crucial reading in an election year."
--Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Director, W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, and author of "America Behind the Color Line: Dialogues with African Americans"

"A major contribution to the ever expanding historical literature of the modern African American freedom struggle. This book brings together outstanding examples of detailed and thoughtful studies of northern as well as southern local movements."
--Clayborne Carson, Professor of History and Director, Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project, Stanford University

"Brilliantly conveys the vibrancy and creativity of community-based movements that transformed America's racial and civic landscape in the decades following World War II."
--Patricia Sullivan, author of "Freedom Writer: Virginia Foster Durr, Letters from the Civil Rights Years"

"Required reading for anyone who wants to understand what the Civil Rights Movement actually was - a national movement conceived and executed by local people in cities and towns across this country. They are the people who made the movement that madeMartin Luther King, Jr.--not the other way around."
--Julian Bond, Professor of History, University of Virginia, American University, and Chairman of the NAACP

"This work demonstrates again and again how local movements complicate the standard civil rights narrative of nonviolence, black power, busing, and the nature of leadership."
--Tracy E. K'Meyer, Associate Professor US History, University of Louisville

"These essays enrich understanding of the valiant struggles to make real the promise of a more democratic US."
--"CHOICE," highly recommended

Over the last several years, the traditional narrative of the civil rights movement as largely a southern phenomenon, organized primarily by male leaders, that roughly began with the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott and ended with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, has been complicated by studies that root the movement in smaller communities across the country. These local movements had varying agendas and organizational development, geared to the particular circumstances, resources, and regions in which they operated. Local civil rights activists frequently worked in tandem with the national civil rights movement but often functioned autonomously from--and sometimes even at odds with--the national movement.

Together, the pathbreaking essays in Groundwork teach us that local civil rights activity was a vibrant component of the larger civil rights movement, and contributed greatly to its national successes. Individually, the pieces offer dramatic new insights about the civil rights movement, such as the fact that a militant black youth organization in Milwaukee was led by a white Catholic priest and in Cambridge, Maryland, by amiddle-aged black woman; that a group of middle-class, professional black women spearheaded Jackson, Mississippi's movement for racial justice and made possible the continuation of the Freedom Rides, and that, despite protests from national headquarters, the Brooklyn chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality staged a dramatic act of civil disobedience at the 1964 World's Fair in New York.

No previous volume has enabled readers to examine several different local movements together, and in so doing, Groundwork forges a far more comprehensive vision of the black freedom movement.