Title Page; Copyright Page; Acknowledgements; Contents; Abbreviations; Introduction; Part I Beginnings; 1 Creating "A Little Heaven for Poor People" Decent Housing and Respectable Communities; 2 "A Woman Can Understand" Dissidence in 1940s Public Housing; Part II Shifting Landscapes; 3 Shifting Landscapes in Postwar Baltimore; 4 "When Then Came the Change" The Fight against Disrepute; Part III Respect, Rights, and Power; 5 "An Awakening Giant" The Search for Poor People's Political Power; 6 "Sunlight at Early Dawn" Economic Struggles, Public Housing, and Welfare Rights; Epilogue
Abbreviations in Notes and BibliographyNotes; Bibliography; Index
Summary
Black women have traditionally represented the canvas on which many debates about poverty and welfare have been drawn. For a quarter century after the publication of the notorious Moynihan report, poor black women were tarred with the same brush: ""ghetto moms"" or ""welfare queens"" living off the state, with little ambition or hope of an independent future. At the same time, the history of the civil rights movement has all too often succumbed to an idolatry that stresses the centrality of prominent leaders while overlooking those who fought daily for their survival in an often hostile urban