Being Somebody and Black Besides

Being Somebody and Black Besides
Author: George B. Nesbitt
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 355
Release: 2021-11-22
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 022678312X

"Like many twentieth-century Black families, the Nesbitts achieved an incredible transformation over the course of a single generation: from performing manual labor on the rural farms of the deep south to holding advanced degrees and owning property in the urban midwest, their family's story was lived or dreamed of by many who moved north during the Great Migration. In Being Somebody and Black Besides, George B. Nesbitt recounts the extraordinary struggles he, his parents, and his five siblings faced in their upwardly mobile journey from the Great Migration through the Freedom Struggle. Born in Champaign, Illinois, Nesbitt earned a law degree at the University of Illinois, enduring racist lectures and administrators who sought to penalize him when he advocated for racial equality. After graduating, he served in World War II, facing discrimination and harassment like many Black soldiers. And when the war was over, despite his education he held many jobs, some quite lowly, before he became deputy assistant to the secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Kennedy administration. A keen observer and narrator of race, Nesbitt recounts with righteous and justified anger his bitter struggles and incredible triumphs, shared by Black men and women in America. His beautifully written memoir is a rare example of a sustained first-person narrative about black life in this era. While many of his experiences will resonate with today's readers, others will provide a crucial glimpse into a chapter of Black life and its place in the unfinished struggle for racial justice in our country"--

The South Side

The South Side
Author: Natalie Y. Moore
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2016-03-22
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1137280158

A lyrical, intelligent, authentic and necessary look at the intersection of race and class in Chicago, a Great American City.Mayors Richard M. Daley and Rahm Emanuel have touted Chicago as a "world-class city." The skyscrapers kissing the clouds, the billion-dollar Millennium Park, Michelin-rated restaurants, pristine lake views, fabulous shopping, vibrant theater scene, downtown flower beds and stellar architecture tell one story. Yet swept under the rug is another story: the stench of segregation that permeates and compromises Chicago. Though other cities - including Cleveland, Los Angeles, and Baltimore - can fight over that mantle, it's clear that segregation defines Chicago. And unlike many other major U.S. cities, no particular race dominates; Chicago is divided equally into black, white and Latino, each group clustered in its various turfs.In this intelligent and highly important narrative, Chicago native Natalie Moore shines a light on contemporary segregation in the city's South Side; her reported essays showcase the lives of these communities through the stories of her family and the people who reside there. The South Side highlights the impact of Chicago's historic segregation - and the ongoing policies that keep the system intact.

Shades of White Flight

Shades of White Flight
Author: Mark T. Mulder
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2015-03-12
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0813575478

Since World War II, historians have analyzed a phenomenon of “white flight” plaguing the urban areas of the northern United States. One of the most interesting cases of “white flight” occurred in the Chicago neighborhoods of Englewood and Roseland, where seven entire church congregations from one denomination, the Christian Reformed Church, left the city in the 1960s and 1970s and relocated their churches to nearby suburbs. In Shades of White Flight, sociologist Mark T. Mulder investigates the migration of these Chicago church members, revealing how these churches not only failed to inhibit white flight, but actually facilitated the congregations’ departure. Using a wealth of both archival and interview data, Mulder sheds light on the forces that shaped these midwestern neighborhoods and shows that, surprisingly, evangelical religion fostered both segregation as well as the decline of urban stability. Indeed, the Roseland and Englewood stories show how religion—often used to foster community and social connectedness—can sometimes help to disintegrate neighborhoods. Mulder describes how the Dutch CRC formed an insular social circle that focused on the local church and Christian school—instead of the local park or square or market—as the center point of the community. Rather than embrace the larger community, the CRC subculture sheltered themselves and their families within these two places. Thus it became relatively easy—when black families moved into the neighborhood—to sell the church and school and relocate in the suburbs. This is especially true because, in these congregations, authority rested at the local church level and in fact they owned the buildings themselves. Revealing how a dominant form of evangelical church polity—congregationalism—functioned within the larger phenomenon of white flight, Shades of White Flight lends new insights into the role of religion and how it can affect social change, not always for the better.

High Rise Stories

High Rise Stories
Author: Audrey Petty
Publisher: McSweeney's
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2013-09-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1940450055

In the gripping first-person accounts of High Rise Stories, former residents of Chicago’s iconic public housing projects describe life in the now-demolished high-rises. These stories of community, displacement, and poverty in the wake of gentrification give voice to those who have long been ignored, but whose hopes and struggles exist firmly at the heart of our national identity.

Edible Memory

Edible Memory
Author: Jennifer A. Jordan
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 346
Release: 2015-04-14
Genre: Cooking
ISBN: 022622810X

Jordan begins with the heirloom tomato, inquiring into its botanical origins in South America and its culinary beginnings in Aztec cooking to show how the homely and homegrown tomato has since grown to be an object of wealth and taste, as well as a popular symbol of the farm-to-table and heritage foods movements. She shows how a shift in the 1940s away from open pollination resulted in a narrow range of hybrid tomato crops. But memory and the pursuit of flavor led to intense seed-saving efforts increasing in the 1970s, as local produce and seeds began to be recognized as living windows to the past.

The Book of Margery Kempe

The Book of Margery Kempe
Author: Margery Kempe
Publisher: Penguin UK
Total Pages: 449
Release: 1985
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0140432515

The story of the eventful and controversial life of Margery Kempe - wife, mother, businesswoman, pilgrim and visionary - is the earliest surviving autobiography in English. Here Kempe (c.1373-c.1440) recounts in vivid, unembarrassed detail the madness that followed the birth of the first of her fourteen children, the failure of her brewery business, her dramatic call to the spiritual life, her visions and uncontrollable tears, the struggle to convert her husband to a vow of chastity and her pilgrimages to Europe and the Holy Land. Margery Kempe could not read or write, and dictated her remarkable story late in life. It remains an extraordinary record of human faith and a portrait of a medieval woman of unforgettable character and courage.

Reviving Old Scratch

Reviving Old Scratch
Author: Richard Beck
Publisher: Fortress Press
Total Pages: 212
Release: 2016-06-03
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1506401368

The devil has fallen on hard times. Surveys say that even the majority of Christians doubt Satans existence. Burdened by doubts, skeptical believers find themselves divorced from Jesus dramatic confrontation with Satan in the Gospels and from the struggle that galvanized the early church. In Reviving Old Scratch, popular blogger and theologian Richard Beck reintroduces the devil to the modern world with a biblical, bold, and urgent vision of spiritual warfare: we must resist the devil by joining the kingdom of Gods subversive campaign to interrupt the world with love. Beck shows how conservative Christians too often overspiritualize the devil and demons, and progressive Christians reduce these forces to social justice issues. By understanding evil as a very real force in the world, we are better able to name it for what it is and thus to combat it as Jesus did. Becks own work in a prison Bible study and at a church for recovering addicts convinced him to take Satan more seriously, and they provide compelling illustrations as he challenges the contemporaryand strangely safeversions of evil forces. The beliefs of liberals and conservatives alike will be tested by Becks groundbreaking ideas, fascinating stories, and clear thinking. Because if Jesus took Satan seriously, says Beck, then so should we. Winner of the 2017 Book of the Year Award from The Academy of Parish Clergy!

An Academic Life

An Academic Life
Author: Hanna Holborn Gray
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 346
Release: 2018-04-10
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0691179182

A compelling memoir by the first woman president of a major American university Hanna Holborn Gray has lived her entire life in the world of higher education. The daughter of academics, she fled Hitler's Germany with her parents in the 1930s, emigrating to New Haven, where her father was a professor at Yale University. She has studied and taught at some of the world's most prestigious universities. She was the first woman to serve as provost of Yale. In 1978, she became the first woman president of a major research university when she was appointed to lead the University of Chicago, a position she held for fifteen years. In 1991, Gray was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, in recognition of her extraordinary contributions to education. An Academic Life is a candid self-portrait by one of academia's most respected trailblazers. Gray describes what it was like to grow up as a child of refugee parents, and reflects on the changing status of women in the academic world. She discusses the migration of intellectuals from Nazi-held Europe and the transformative role these exiles played in American higher education—and how the émigré experience in America transformed their own lives and work. She sheds light on the character of university communities, how they are structured and administered, and the balance they seek between tradition and innovation, teaching and research, and undergraduate and professional learning. An Academic Life speaks to the fundamental issues of purpose, academic freedom, and governance that arise time and again in higher education, and that pose sharp challenges to the independence and scholarly integrity of each new generation.