BOOK REVIEWS
prejudice. He points out how racial integration has become synonymous among opponents with economic decline and outlines the historic use of “redlining,” as an effective tactic to prevent blacks from accessing funds to renovate or purchase homes. His analysis is an important contribution to understanding how and why there are slums, especially in the context of deliberate government disinvestment and displacement policies. It was disappointing to read that New Deal programs under President Franklin Roosevelt offered financial incentives to white home buyers but not to Blacks, in exchange for moving out of older inner city neighborhoods. At the same time, local and state governments redirected transportation funds from public transit to a focus on the automobile and roads for new white suburban homeowners. At least 3,500 mostly black households were permanently displaced when “slum clearance” targeted and destroyed their homes. Financial assistance from the Federal government was also only extended to whites as incentives to move to the new suburbs. Later findings established that investing in and maintaining existing housing stock was thirty percent The Battle of Lincoln Park: Urban Renewal and Gentrification in Chicago ...continued from page 36
Regarding home demolitions, the resident contended that “the street has not been renewed but replaced. What has really happened is you have destroyed our home and replaced us with another more affluent group of people whom you feel deserve the convenience of what was once ours more than we do.” with twelve-hour workdays; low wages; and other abusive conditions. Workers once highly regarded for their efforts and abilities became “second-rate citizens with little hope of improvement.” Many women began to flee westward as messages highlighting fewer societal constraints in the west spread throughout the east. These women became ranchers, schoolteachers, dressmakers, and boardinghouse keepers. When they formed a ladies’ aid society to care for impoverished women and families, the men found themselves “sharing equal status with the women.” Many of the men packed up and left. “Women missionaries, ladies of medicine, and suffragettes also moved to the territory,” seizing the opportunities for “new heights of great achievement” historians have rarely acknowledged. However, they have
cheaper than demolishing it. A clubhouse for “unattended” boys was also a success story. One outspoken resident saw the problems clearly and protested the plans. “Nothing ever got conserved with a bulldozer. For whom is the street to be conserved? If not for the people who live on it then it is a matter of open discrimination.” Roses of theWest: Yesterday’s Women, 1826-1977 by Anne Seagraves 2002, 176pp (WESANNE PUBLICATIONS: Idaho) ISBN 0-9619088-6-6; $12.95, PB The rose was a symbol of the women of the early west: Rare and Precious. Men often described their wives or sweethearts as beautiful as a rose, sweet as a rose, or gentle as a rose. Female rodeo stars had names like Texas Rose Bascom and Prairie Rose Henderson. Although the rose itself appears to be fragile, there are many varieties that are hardy and tenacious as well as beautiful—all attributes of the western woman. Excerpted from Roses of the West When industrialization replaced home- based industries in the northeastern parts of the United States around the mid-1830s, factories emerged along
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44—PATHWAYS—Winter 20-21
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