In this collective biography, Rhonda Y. Williams takes us behind, and beyond, politically expedient labels to provide an incisive and intimate portrait of poor black women in urban America. Drawing on dozens of interviews, Williams challenges the notion that low-income housing was a resounding failure that doomed three consecutive generations of post-war Americans to entrenched poverty. Instead, she recovers a history of grass-roots activism, of political awakening, and of class mobility, all facilitated by the creation of affordable public housing. The stereotyping of black women, especially mothers, has obscured a complicated and nuanced reality too often warped by the political agendas of both the left and the right, and has prevented an accurate understanding of the successes and failures of government anti-poverty policy.

Rhonda Y. Williams is Associate Professor of Women's Studies and History at Case Western Reserve University.

• 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 II - 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