Latino Studies: Bronx Teaching Resources

Thirty-five years after this landmark of urban history first captured the rise, fall, and rebirth of a once-thriving New York City borough--ravaged in the 1970s and '80s by disinvestment and fires, then heroically revived and rebuilt in the 1990s by community activists--Jill Jonnes returns to chronicle the ongoing revival of the South Bronx. Though now globally renowned as the birthplace of hip-hop, the South Bronx remains America's poorest urban congressional district. In this new edition, we meet the present generation of activists who are transforming their communities with the arts and greening, notably the restoration of the Bronx River. For better or worse, real estate investors have noticed, setting off new gentrification struggles.

Community activist Carolyn McLaughlin takes us on a journey of the South Bronx through the eyes of its community members. Facing burned-out neighborhoods of the 1970s, the community fought back. McLaughlin illustrates the spirit of the community in creating a vibrant, diverse culture and its decades-long commitment to develop nonprofit housing and social-services, and to advocate for better education, health care, and a healthier environment. For the South Bronx to remain a safe haven for poor families, maintaining affordable housing is the central--but most challenging--task. South Bronx Battles is the comeback story of a community that was once in crisis but now serves as a beacon for other cities to rebuild, while keeping their neighborhoods affordable.

In Bronx Faces and Voices, sixteen men and women tell their personal, uncensored stories of the New York City borough?before, during, and after the troubled years of arson, crime, abandonment, and flight in the 1970s and 1980s. The voices in this volume are as eclectic as the Bronx itself: elected officials, religious leaders, and activists who were determined to preserve the beauty of their parks and stability of their community. They had the courage to stay and fight against drug dealers, absent and indifferent landlords, banks that red-lined entire neighborhoods, and a voracious media that made of the Bronx an international symbol of urban disaster. Some are no longer alive. But each of the sixteen played a positive role in a pivotal time, and they all deserve to be remembered and to have their voices heard. Portraits in this volume by noted photographers Georgeen Comerford and Walter Rosenblum document the Bronx "faces" in their beauty and diversity: young and old, witnesses to the history they lived and created.

A Plague on Your Houses is a scorching indictment of the decision to close fire companies in New York in the 1970s and a frightening study of the way misguided and malevolent social policy can spark a chain reaction of enormous and unforeseen urban collapse..