Jesse Chanin. Building Power, Breaking Power: The United Teachers of New Orleans, 1965-2008. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2024. Reviewed by Daniel G. Cumming Ten years after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, a Chicago Tribune columnist memorialized the catastrophe with disturbing notes of envy. Though full of chaos, tragedy, and heartbreak, she said, “that’s what it took to hit the reset button.” As she put it, “Hurricane Katrina gave a great American city a rebirth.” In a shockingly callous piece, the columnist even found herself “wishing for a storm in Chi ..read more

During the summer of 2016, architectural historians Anne E. Bruder, Susan Hellman, and Catherine W. Zipf came together over their shared interest in documenting the history of The Negro Travelers’ Green Book, more commonly referred to as simply “the Green Book.” As noted in their interview below, a series of conference engagements led to the realization that both the general public and academics shared an interest in excavating and highlighting the national history of The Green Book. With that knowledge in mind and the determination to map out this history before it vanished, the three histori ..read more

If you’ve been to Los Angeles recently and had the opportunity to visit the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), perhaps you were able to drop in on its new exhibit, “Ed Ruscha/Now Then“. Ruscha has long been an observer of the city, especially with regard to its vernacular and commercial architecture. While the LACMA exhibit focuses more on his paintings and print work, Ruscha is also famous for his photographic documentation, spanning five decades, of one of L.A.’s most iconic throughways, Sunset Boulevard. A new digital humanities project called Sunset Over Sunset (SOS) has embarked up ..read more

Hey all, it’s our final reminder that the submission window for the Eighth Annual Graduate Student Blogging Contest is still open—through July 12, 2024. We look forward to your submissions about connections, whether literal of figurative, in the historic urban landscape. We are pleased to announce this year’s contest judges: Dr. Andrew Sandoval-Strausz of Pennsylvania State University, current UHA president; Dr. Elizabeth Hinton of Yale University, UHA president-elect; and Dr. LaDale Winling of Virginia Tech. We appreciate that they have volunteered their time to reading every blog entry and d ..read more

By J. Mark Souther Few things embody the freedom of American life more than mobility, and perhaps no other form of transportation, for better and worse, has defined mobility in the United States like cars. Yet in the era of Jim Crow, mobility for Black families could be dangerous, even deadly; hence the need for The Negro Motorist Green Book, known colloquially as the Green Book, which provided Black motorists and their companions with restaurants, hotels, and other sites where race would be no issue, giving them the ability to navigate the nation by its roads and highways without or perhaps w ..read more

Richard E. Ocejo. Sixty Miles Upriver: Gentrification and Race in a Small American City. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2024. Reviewed by Mario Hernandez Focusing on small cities rather than the large metropolitan areas typically covered in gentrification literature, Richard Ocejo’s Sixty Miles Up River makes significant contributions to the study of gentrification. Beyond location, the author emphasizes the moral dimension of gentrification, including the “narratives, discourses, and actions of gentrification stakeholders.”[1] This perspective also highlights the crucial role of r ..read more

Sharon D. Wright Austin, ed. Political Black Girl Magic: The Elections and Governance of Black Female Mayors. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2023. Reviewed by Sarena Martinez Political Black Girl Magic: The Elections and Governance of Black Female Mayors, edited by political scientist professor Sharon D. Wright Austin, is a trailblazing volume that draws together twenty-two contributing authors to assert several conclusions. Black female mayors face considerable challenges in campaigning and governing because of their race and gender. By and large, their focus is on economic equity, ed ..read more

Editor’s note: This is the final entry in our theme for the month, Cities of the Eastern Mediterranean by Ingy Higazi In September 1923, Egyptian writer al-Sayyid ‘Abd al-Mu‘min Kamil al-Hakim set out on a journey from al-Qantara, east of the Suez Canal on Egypt’s northeastern border, to Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria. His month-long journey from Egypt to the Levant, which he embarked on “in fulfillment of the duties of nationalism and neighborliness,” was entirely by rail.[1] In his travel account, Riḥlat Misrī ila Falastīn, Lubnān wa Sūriyya, published in Cairo in 1924, al-Hakim vividly desc ..read more

Editor’s note: This is the fifth entry in our theme for May, Cities of the Eastern Mediterranean. by Francesco Anselmetti Entering ‘Akka in November 1693, ‘Abdel Ghani al-Nabulsi was overcome with disappointment. “We arrived at ‘Akka—a ruined town”, the Damascene intellectual writes, “its walls destroyed, the eye of its castle gouged out, the fruits of its industry absent. A few houses remain here and there: bundles of sticks of little consequence.”[1] Al-Nabulsi could perhaps be forgiven for his high expectations. Having no doubt read the triumphal accounts of the Mamluk reconquest of the Cr ..read more

Editor’s Note: This is the fourth entry in our theme for the month of May: Cities of the Eastern Mediterranean by Molly Oringer “The rabbis prayed here, in Saïda’s synagogue,” recalled Basma, a Palestinian woman in her mid-thirties. It was early 2020, and we stood gathering in a courtyard typical of the medieval neighborhood, Ḥarat al-Yahūd (The Jewish Quarter), an area within the city of Saïda (Sidon) in southern Lebanon. Basma gestured toward a nearby alleyway while telling us (Janan, my friend and research assistant; Ahmed, a Palestinian cafe owner and our neighborhood guide; and myself, a ..read more