Struggle for the City

“Not only does Derek Handley present a compelling account—sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes hopeful—of local communities fighting for their survival against forces of racial and economic inequality and control, he provides fresh perspectives on key concepts like publicity and citizenship that warrant serious scholarly reflection. This book is a must read for anyone hoping to understand historical and contemporary challenges to and opportunities for enacting vibrant, democratic public worlds.” —Robert Asen, author of School Choice and the Betrayal of Democracy: How Market-Based Education Reform Fails Our Communities “This important project shifts attention from the well-documented activities of the southern Civil Rights Movement to the rhetorical agency and initiatives of those struggling against so-called ‘urban renewal and redevelopment,’ leading to the ultimate displacement of black communities in three midwestern communities. After a cohesive comparison of each community’s use of rhetorical actions, the author closes with a discussion of how these struggles have been critically memorialized and thereby established as permanent inspirations for future generations.” —Shirley Logan, author of Liberating Language: Sites of Rhetorical Education in Nineteenth-Century Black America “Through extensive research and a careful attention to rhetoric, Struggle for the City reframes our understanding of urban renewal by focusing on the strategies of response developed by Black neighbors and organizers to confront and resist the systematic dismantlement of Black communities as well as to remember the social and physical bonds that held these neighborhoods together in the wake of state-sponsored displacement and destruction.” —Adrienne Brown, author of The Residential Is Racial: A Perceptual History of Mass Homeownership