by Wendell E. Pritchett (Author)

From its founding in the late 1800s through the 1950s, Brownsville, a section of eastern Brooklyn, was a white, predominantly Jewish, working-class neighborhood. The famous New York district nurtured the aspirations of thousands of upwardly mobile Americans while the infamous gangsters of Murder, Incorporated controlled its streets. But during the 1960s, Brownsville was stigmatized as a black and Latino ghetto, a neighborhood with one of the city's highest crime rates. Home to the largest concentration of public housing units in the city, Brownsville came to be viewed as emblematic of urban decline. And yet, at the same time, the neighborhood still supported a wide variety of grass-roots movements for social change.

Front Jacket

Brownsville, Brooklyn traces the history of Brownsville, a section of Brooklyn, from its origins as a white, predominately Jewish, working-class neighborhood through its transformation in the 1960s into a black and Latino ghetto, a stigmatized neighborhood with one of the city's highest crime rates. Focusing on the interaction of Brownsville residents with New York's political and institutional elites, Wendell Pritchett shows how the profound economic and social changes of post-World War II America affected the area.

Author Biography

Wendell Pritchett is a visiting assistant professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania and assistant professor of history at Baruch College of the City University of New York.

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