BROWNSVILLE, BROOKLYN: Blacks, Jews, and the Changing Face of the Ghetto

Between 1943 and 1970, Brownsville went from being a "white, predominantly Jewish, working- class neighborhood" of 100,000 to being a 75% black/20% Puerto Rican neighborhood of 70,000. This fascinating cultural and social analysis traces Brownsville from its economically ambitious if poor beginnings through its rise, economic decline and current stirrings toward renaissance. Developed in the 1890s amid high land costs, speculation and immigration, by 1907 Brownsville was known as a "Modern Tenement City." That reputation held until the 1940s, when unplanned housing development, government neglect and white racism destroyed the thriving neighborhood—not least, the author surprisingly argues, via liberal lobbies and labor unions pushing for "slum clearance." Pritchett, an assistant professor of history at CUNY's Baruch College, stays close throughout to community groups, from the earliest Jewish charitable and educational societies to the role women played in political organizing during the war years, the integrated Brownsville Boys Clubs in the late 1940s, the beginning of black and Latino community organizing in the 1950s, the devastating effect of white flight on longstanding Jewish religious institutions in the mid-1960s and multiracial and religious grassroots organizing around issues such as housing and poverty. Pritchett demonstrates with empathy and intelligence how race, ethnicity, culture and gender influence both the successes and failures of these community groups—and the community they represent. (Apr.)

Forecast:The cover, subtitle and publicity material cast this book as operating within the tired blacks vs. Jews framework, but its implications for interracial community organizing are really much broader than that. While its scholarly approach will limit its audience, this is a careful and focused monograph that could pick up some trade readers with an interest in New York.