List
Fair Housing in Skokie: Past and Present
Recommended reading list from Emily England, museum manager at the Skokie Heritage Museum. "This list is inspired by our June 2024 talk on fair housing and the experiences of the first Black homebuyers in Skokie. These resources expand on the wider history of housing discrimination against primarily Black Americans. A full history of fair housing would include the stories of many more protected classes and peoples' fights for civil rights."
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The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
2017 by Rothstein, RichardGet this itemFrom Library Journal: "Rothstein provides a new, eye-opening history of the development of American cities. His focus is on how federal, state, and local governments have structured and reinforced neighborhood segregation."
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Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It
2022 by Gray, M. NolanGet this itemFrom the publisher: "With lively explanations and stories, Gray shows why zoning abolition is a necessary-if not sufficient-condition for building more affordable, vibrant, equitable, and sustainable cities."
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When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History Of Racial Inequality In Twentieth-century America
2016 by Katznelson, IraGet this itemFrom Library Journal: "Katznelson offers history and analysis demonstrating that the national social welfare programs of 60 and 70 years ago—e.g., Social Security, labor laws that created collective bargaining for unions, and the GI Bill—in fact gave affirmative economic opportunities to whites at the expense of racial minorities, particularly Blacks."
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The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration
2010 by Wilkerson, IsabelGet this itemFrom Library Journal: "Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Wilkerson's epic and intimate scholarly portrait of the Great Migration of southern African Americans to the North is the first comprehensive study of that movement."
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Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
2020 by Wilkerson, IsabelGet this itemFrom Staff Member Amber I.: "Isabel Wilkerson is blunt in her discussion of racism and caste discrimination, but I appreciated all of the research that went into creating such a powerful book."
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Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership
2019 by Taylor, Keeanga-YamahttaGet this itemFrom the publisher: "Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor offers a ... chronicle of the twilight of redlining and the introduction of conventional real estate practices into the Black urban market, uncovering a transition from racist exclusion to predatory inclusion."
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Friends Disappear: The Battle for Racial Equality in Evanston: The Battle for Racial Equality in Evanston
2014 by Barr, MaryGet this itemFrom the publisher: "In Friends Disappear, Barr goes back to her old neighborhood and pieces together a history of Evanston with a particular emphasis on its neighborhoods, its schools, and its work life."
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Crossing the Class and Color Lines: From Public Housing to White Suburbia
2000 by Rubinowitz, Leonard S.Get this itemFrom the publisher: "Crossing the Class and Color Lines is the story of that project, from the initial struggles and discomfort of the relocated families to their eventual successes in employment and education—cementing the sociological concept of the 'neighborhood effect' and shattering the myth that inner-city Blacks cannot escape a 'culture of poverty.'"
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Family Properties: Race, Real Estate, and the Exploitation of Black Urban America
2009 by Satter, BerylGet this itemFrom Publishers Weekly: "Setting out to prove that the decline of Black neighborhoods into slums had nothing to do with the absence of African-American resources and everything to do with subjugation and greed, Satter draws on her father's records to piece together a thoughtful and very personal account of the exploitation that kept Blacks segregated and impoverished."
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The Chicago Freedom Movement: Martin Luther King Jr. and Civil Rights Activism in the North
2016Get this itemFrom the publisher: "In this important volume, an eminent team of scholars and activists offer an alternative assessment of the Chicago Freedom Movement's impact on race relations and social justice, both in the city and across the nation. Building upon recent works, the contributors reexamine the movement and illuminate its lasting contributions in order to challenge conventional perceptions that have underestimated its impressive legacy."
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Blueprint for Disaster: The Unraveling of Chicago Public Housing
2009 by Hunt, D. BradfordGet this itemFrom the publisher: "Challenging explanations that attribute the projects’ decline primarily to racial discrimination and real estate interests, Hunt argues that well-intentioned but misguided policy decisions—ranging from design choices to maintenance contracts—also paved the road to failure."
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Block by Block: Neighborhoods and Public Policy on Chicago's West Side
2005 by Seligman, Amanda I.Get this itemFrom the publisher: "In the decades following World War II, cities across the United States saw an influx of African American families into otherwise homogeneously white areas. This racial transformation of urban neighborhoods led many whites to migrate to the suburbs, producing the phenomenon commonly known as white flight. In Block by Block, Amanda I. Seligman draws on the surprisingly understudied West Side communities of Chicago to shed new light on this story of postwar urban America."
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