Mary Pattillo-McCoy's Books

Black Picket Fences

Privilege & Peril among the Black Middle Class

By: Mary Pattillo

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Black Picket Fences

Privilege & Peril among the Black Middle Class

By: Mary Pattillo

First published in 1999, Mary Pattillo’s Black Picket Fences explores an American demographic group too often ignored by both scholars and the media: the black middle class. Nearly fifteen years later, this book remains a groundbreaking study of a group still underrepresented in the academic and public spheres. The result of living for three years in “Groveland,” a black middle-class neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side, Black Picket Fences explored both the advantages the black middle class has and the boundaries they still face. Despite arguments that race no longer matters, Pattillo showed a different reality, one where black and white middle classes remain separate and unequal. Stark, moving, and still timely, the book is updated for this edition with a new epilogue by the author that details how the neighborhood and its residents fared in the recession of 2008, as well as new interviews with many of the same neighborhood residents featured in the original. Also included is a new foreword by acclaimed University of Pennsylvania sociologist Annette Lareau.

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Page Count

349

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

022602122X

ISBN 13

9780226021225

Friends Disappear

The Battle for Racial Equality in Evanston

By: Mary Barr

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Friends Disappear

The Battle for Racial Equality in Evanston

By: Mary Barr

A sociologist returns to her suburban Illinois hometown to compare the paths of black and white childhood friends in a “fascinating” mix of study and memoir (Chicago Tribune). Mary Barr thinks a lot about the old photograph on her refrigerator door. In it, she and a dozen or so friends from the Chicago suburb of Evanston sit on a porch. It’s 1974, the summer after they graduated from Nichols Middle School, and what strikes her immediately—aside from the Soul Train–era clothes—is the diversity of the group: boys and girls, black and white, in the variety of poses you’d expect from a bunch of friends on the verge of high school. But the photo also speaks to the history of Evanston, to integration, and to the ways that those in the picture experienced and remembered growing up in a place that many at that time considered to be a racial utopia. In Friends Disappear, Barr goes back to her old neighborhood and pieces together a history of Evanston with a particular emphasis on its neighborhoods, its schools, and its work life. She finds that there is a detrimental myth of integration surrounding Evanston despite bountiful evidence of actual segregation, both in the archives and from the life stories of her subjects. Curiously, the city’s own desegregation plan is partly to blame. The initiative called for the redistribution of students from an all-black elementary school to institutions situated in white neighborhoods. That, however, required busing, and between the tensions it generated and obvious markers of class difference, the racial divide, far from being closed, was widened. Friends Disappear highlights how racial divides limited the life chances of blacks while providing opportunities for whites, and offers an insider’s perspective on the social practices that doled out benefits and penalties based on race—despite attempts to integrate. “Barr’s gripping exploration of the divergent paths friends took away from a childhood snapshot combines the rigor of scholarship with the personal touch of memoir. I have rarely read a book that so effectively illustrates the persistence of racial disparities in the United States with unforgettable, wrenching life stories.” —Amanda Seligman, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Honorable Mention, Midwest Sociological Society Distinguished Book Award

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Page Count

318

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

022615663X

ISBN 13

9780226156637

Black on the Block

The Politics of Race and Class in the City

By: Mary Pattillo

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Black on the Block

The Politics of Race and Class in the City

By: Mary Pattillo

In Black on the Block, Mary Pattillo—a Newsweek Woman of the 21st Century—uses the historic rise, alarming fall, and equally dramatic renewal of Chicago’s North Kenwood–Oakland neighborhood to explore the politics of race and class in contemporary urban America. There was a time when North Kenwood–Oakland was plagued by gangs, drugs, violence, and the font of poverty from which they sprang. But in the late 1980s, activists rose up to tackle the social problems that had plagued the area for decades. Black on the Block tells the remarkable story of how these residents laid the groundwork for a revitalized and self-consciously black neighborhood that continues to flourish today. But theirs is not a tale of easy consensus and political unity, and here Pattillo teases out the divergent class interests that have come to define black communities like North Kenwood–Oakland. She explores the often heated battles between haves and have-nots, home owners and apartment dwellers, and newcomers and old-timers as they clash over the social implications of gentrification. Along the way, Pattillo highlights the conflicted but crucial role that middle-class blacks play in transforming such districts as they negotiate between established centers of white economic and political power and the needs of their less fortunate black neighbors. “A century from now, when today's sociologists and journalists are dust and their books are too, those who want to understand what the hell happened to Chicago will be finding the answer in this one.”—Chicago Reader “To see how diversity creates strange and sometimes awkward bedfellows . . . turn to Mary Pattillo's Black on the Block.”—Boston Globe

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Page Count

403

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0226649334

ISBN 13

9780226649337

Black Picket Fences

Privilege and Peril Among the Black Middle Class

By: Mary E. Pattillo,Mary Pattillo-McCoy

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Black Picket Fences

Privilege and Peril Among the Black Middle Class

By: Mary E. Pattillo,Mary Pattillo-McCoy

Black Picket Fences is a stark, moving, and candid look at a section of America that is too often ignored by both scholars and the media: the black middle class. The result of living for three years in "Groveland," a black middle-class neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, sociologist Mary Pattillo-McCoy has written a book that explores both the advantages and the boundaries that exist for members of the black middle class. Despite arguments that race no longer matters, Pattillo-McCoy shows a different reality, one where black and white middle classes remain separate and unequal. "An insightful look at the socio-economic experiences of the black middle class. . . . Through the prism of a South Side Chicago neighborhood, the author shows the distinctly different reality middle-class blacks face as opposed to middle-class whites." —Ebony "A detailed and well-written account of one neighborhood's struggle to remain a haven of stability and prosperity in the midst of the cyclone that is the American economy." —Emerge

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Page Count

292

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0226649296

ISBN 13

9780226649290

Women In Later Life: Exploring Race And Ethnicity

Exploring Race and Ethnicity

By: Afshar, Haleh,Franks, Myfanwy,Maynard, Mary Ann

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Women In Later Life: Exploring Race And Ethnicity

Exploring Race and Ethnicity

By: Afshar, Haleh,Franks, Myfanwy,Maynard, Mary Ann

This volume is based on feminist qualitative research with older women, contextualised within current literature & debates in the field of social gerontology. The authors provide an overview of current knowledge & understanding about the circumstances & experiences of older people in relation to gender & ethnicity.

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Page Count

210

Publisher

McGraw-Hill Education (UK)

Published Date

ISBN 10

0335215254

ISBN 13

9780335215256

Book's by Mary Pattillo-McCoy

Black Picket Fences

Black Picket Fences

Friends Disappear

Friends Disappear

Black on the Block

Black on the Block

Black Picket Fences

Black Picket Fences

Women In Later Life: Exploring Race And Ethnicity

Women In Later Life: Exploring Race And Ethnicity

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