AHA Session 24
Friday, January 3, 2025: 1:30 PM-3:00 PM
Petit Trianon (New York Hilton, Third Floor)
Chair:
LaShawn D. Harris, Michigan State University
Panel:
Shakti Castro, Columbia University
Menika Dirkson, Morgan State University
Madeleine Hamlin, Colgate University
Menika Dirkson, Morgan State University
Madeleine Hamlin, Colgate University
Comment:
Simon Balto, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Session Abstract
This roundtable brings together a group of scholars who will discuss their experiences growing up, living in, and researching the urban histories of New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia. These cities are not only among the six largest in the country, but they also share similar 20th century histories of segregation, deindustrialization, white flight, job flight, a declining tax base, sanctuary city status, rising numbers of political leaders of color in office, poverty-induced crime, and tough-on-crime policing. As a result, these metropolises are burdened by similar modern-day social issues. Everyday people, activists, scholars, and social work professionals from this trio of cities have often borrowed strategies from each other and implemented social welfare techniques to solve postwar issues like gang activity, gun violence, the failures of public housing, and public health crises like open-air drug markets, homelessness, and inadequate rehabilitation for juveniles and adults. However, when one of these cities progresses in making positive advances towards racial and social equity in one of these areas of social concern, another city regresses backward in that same area. Furthermore, this discussion will focus on 20th century issues of race, poverty, crime, policing, (im)migration, public housing, public health, education, juvenile delinquency, government leadership, and social welfare in these three major U.S. cities to explain how academics can be influential in inspiring a consistent collaborative, multi-city, antiracist, and collectivist-centric public policy today.
See more of: AHA Sessions