Crown Heights: Blacks, Jews, and the 1991 Brooklyn Riot
Edward S. Shapiro, . . Univ. Press of New England/Brandeis Univ., $29.95 (252pp) ISBN 978-1-58465-561-9
Perhaps no single event shook the notion of a black-Jewish alliance like the 1991 unrest in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, which began after a Hasidic Jewish motorcade accidentally killed a black child. As Shapiro shows in this comprehensive, dispassionate account, the accident and what followed touched off a political firestorm in New York City: both black and Jewish activists exploited the death and the ensuing black unrest—during which a Jewish student was killed—for their own purposes. Shapiro deconstructs the simplistic readings of the event given at the time: some thought the Hasidic community received favored treatment, others that then Mayor David Dinkins was unwilling to use force against the black community. Historian Shapiro (
Reviewed on: 02/06/2006
Genre: Nonfiction