The Official Blog of the Urban History Association
The Metropole Bookshelf is an opportunity for authors of forthcoming or recently published books to let the UHA community know about their new work in the field. By Briana A. Thomas Writing my debut history book, Black Broadway in Washington, D.C., felt like traveling through time. Navigating through the past three centuries of rich, vibrant, […]
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Fernandez, Johanna. The Young Lords: A Radical History. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2020. Reviewed by Leo Valdes In 1969 activists convened at the first Chicano Youth Liberation Conference. Among them were New York Puerto Ricans excited to learn about a group of Chicago activists who wore purple berets and carried a […]
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Editor’s note: This is the third post in a three part series by Kirin Makker exploring Black community building in rural towns during the Jim Crow era. Click here to see Part I. Part II can be found here. By Kirin Makker Though a story about a scattered community, the history of the Farmers Improvement […]
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Editor’s note: This is the second post in a three part series by Kirin Makker exploring Black community building in rural towns during the Jim Crow era. Click here to see Part I. Part III can be found here. By Kirin Makker Robert L. Smith was a black politician and social entrepreneur during the rise […]
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By Charles Lester With his most recent book, Charles Blow offers an intriguing proposition for Black empowerment–a mass migration of African Americans to the South. He argues that the project of northern and western migration of previous generations has given way to racial prejudice, de facto segregation, failing schools, chronic underemployment, few economic opportunities or […]
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Schneider, Eric C. The Ecology of Homicide: Race, Place, and Space in Postwar Philadelphia. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020. Reviewed by Menika Dirkson In 2006 national news media bestowed the name “Killadelphia” on the “City of Brotherly Love” when police recorded 406 homicides, predominantly involving Black men, in Philadelphia’s low-income, African American neighborhoods. For […]
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Editor’s note: This is the fourth in a series of articles during April that examine the construction of the Interstate Highway System over the past seven decades. The series, titled Justice and the Interstates, opens up new areas for historical inquiry, while also calling on policy makers and the transportation and urban planning professions to […]
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By Chanelle Rose On August 20, 2020, the Miami Herald featured an article titled “‘A History of Broken Promises: Miami Remains Separate and Unequal for Black Residents.” After providing a comprehensive look at the stark racial disparities in housing, income, education, employment, and government that continues to disproportionately impact African Americans, the newspaper reported: “one […]
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By N. D. B. Connolly I sometimes recall a chance conversation from the early 2000s that feels increasingly unreal with every passing year. I can’t remember if it happened at a conference in Tempe, Arizona, or Portland, Maine. I do recollect that I was a graduate student on the very front end of a dissertation, […]
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Editor’s note: March kicks off The Metropole’s coverage of its Metropolis of the Month: Miami. We begin with our usual overview/bibliography to be followed each week with at least one article on the city for the month. In Michael Mann’s 2006 film, Miami Vice, detectives Sonny Crocket and Ricardo Tubbs jump from pastel-hued 1980s television […]
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