"Housing and School Segregation: Government Culpability, Government Remedies." (2004) These three historical studies, funded by a multi-year grant from the Ford Foundation, trace the development of federal housing and transportation policies in relation to increasing housing and school segregation in American metropolitan areas. These studies take a much closer look at the early decisions and policies within the federal bureaucracy that have been broadly described in works like Douglas Massey & Nancy Denton’s American Apartheid.

"The Last and Most Difficult Barrier: Segregation and Federal Housing Policy in the Eisenhower Administration, 1953-1960" In the first of these studies, Professor Arnold Hirsch of the University of New Orleans History Dept., addresses the evolution of federal housing policy directly after the Brown decision, and includes new evidence of collaboration between the Federal Housing Administration and officials in President Dwight Eisenhower's Administration seeking to evade compliance with the Brown ruling by manipulating locations of federally-subsidized housing. Hirsch’s work also chronicles the heroic efforts of Frank Horne, an official of the Race Relations Service of the Housing and Home Finance Agency, to reform the system from within.

Hirsch presents new evidence on how Eisenhower's appointments to the Advisory Committee on Housing, the conservative framing of urban renewal legislation, and the silencing of Horne and the RRS staff all posed challenges to creating housing equity. This research makes clear that it was not just local policies and leadership that were responsible for housing segregation, but that federal policies significantly impacted housing disparities and discrimination. See full text.

"The Interstates and the Cities: Highways, Housing, and the Freeway Revolt" Professor Raymond Mohl of the University of Alabama at Birmingham History Dept. analyzes federal transportation policies and programs, particularly highways, and how housing and transportation together helped to create and maintain racially segregated housing patterns in our metropolitan areas. The first part of Mohl’s research chronicles the dramatic changes experienced in American cities in the decades after the Second World War. Closely linked to this powerful urban transformation was the construction after 1956 of the national interstate highway system, a 42,500-mile network of high-speed, limited-access highways that linked cities across the country. See full text.

In addition, Mohl analyzes the freeway revolts that erupted in American cities in the 1960s and early 1970s. Until the mid-1960s, state and federal highway engineers had complete control over freeway route location. In many cities, the new highways ripped through neighborhoods, parks, historic districts, and environmentally sensitive areas. Beginning in San Francisco, citizen movements sprang up to challenge the highwaymen. Mohl presents case studies of freeway building and citizen opposition in Miami and Baltimore to illustrate the larger patterns of the national freeway revolt. See full text.

"Democracy's Unfinished Business: Federal Policy and the Search for Fair Housing, 1961-1968" Dr. David Freund of Rutgers University examines the federal government’s campaign to promote “fair housing” during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Beginning in 1961, the executive and legislative branches declared their commitment to ending racial discrimination in federal housing programs, marking a sharp break with decades of policy that had been instrumental to creating a racially-segregated, "dual" market for residential neighborhoods. Freund’s study carefully reconstructs the efforts of Robert Weaver and the members of the Intergroup Relations Service (IRS) to transform both the bureaucratic structure and culture of the powerful agencies that had long given shape to the nation’s metropolitan areas.

To fully understand their efforts and the obstacles that they encountered, Freund first revisits the earlier history of government housing policy, and examines its legacy for the "fair housing" movement. He shows how three decades of federal intervention had left white officials, policy makers, and voters deeply committed to the segregated market for housing. This structural and ideological legacy, Weaver and the IRS would find out, proved very resistant to change. See full text.

Putting the Movement Back into Civil Rights Teaching (2004) provides lessons and articles on how to go beyond a "heroes" approach to the Civil Rights Movement. As one of the most commonly taught stories of people's struggles for social justice, the Civil Rights Movement has the capacity to help students develop a critical analysis of United States history and strategies for change. However, the empowering potential is often lost in a trivial pursuit of names and dates. By putting the Movement back into civil rights teaching, we hope to help students find their connection to history and learn about the roles they can play in fighting injustice today. This publication challenges many of the myths about the Movement, making it clear, for example, that the Movement was made by thousands of people and organizations -- not a few exceptional heroes. Published by the Poverty & Race Research Action Council (PRRAC) and by Teaching for Change, Putting the Movement Back into Civil Rights Teaching includes interactive, interdisciplinary lessons, readings, photographs, primary documents, and interviews, with sections on education, labor, citizenship, culture, and reflections on teaching about the Civil Rights Movement. 576 pages. Available for $25 from www.teachingforchange.org. Funded by the Akonadi Foundation; Susan A. & Donald P. Babson Charitable Foundation; Center for Language Minority Education and Research (CLMER); Humanities Council of Washington, DC; Fannie Mae Foundation; George Gund Foundation.

"Evictions: The Hidden Housing Problem" is a 41-page commissioned article, by PRRAC Director of Research Chester Hartman and David Robinson of Legal Services for NYC, appearing in Vol. 14, Issue 4 (2003) of Housing Policy Debate, the Fannie Mae Foundation Journal, along with commentaries by Michael Schill of NYU, Dennis Keating of Cleveland State Univ. and Lenore Monello & Skip Schloming of the Small Property Owners Assn. The article reviews definitional issues, the available data on evictions — particularly as they affect lower-income and minority tenants — and model efforts to reduce the incidence and impact of evictions. The article ends with a call for developing a national database on evictions: who's being evicted, for what reason, and what happens to evictees. The articles and commentaries can be downloaded at www.fanniemaefoundation.org/programs/hpd/v14i4-index.shtml and subscriptions to the quarterly HPD are free from the Fannie Mae Foundation, 4000 Wisconsin Ave. NW, N. Tower #1, Wash., DC 20016-2804, fax: 202/274-8111.
 

Fragmented: Improving Education for Mobile Students (Fall 2003) A 64-page handbook written for PRRAC by Lynora Williams, with a Foreword by Wendy Puriefoy of The Public Education Network. Drawing on the material from the Winter 2003 Journal of Negro Education ("Student Mobility: How Some Children Get Left Behind"), co-edited by PRRAC's Director of Research Chester Hartman, Fragmented outlines the specific classroom mobility issues faced by low-income and minority students, especially homeless, immigrant, farmworker, special ed and foster children; and provides a series of specific action steps to ameliorate this problem — drawn from "best practices" case studies from Chicago, Texas, Minneapolis, Los Angeles and Dept. of Defense schools. $5/copy (bulk discounts available by calling the PRRAC office at 202/906-8023).

"False HOPE: A Critical Assessment of the HOPE VI Public Housing Redevelopment Program" (2003) by the National Housing Law Project, PRRAC, Sherwood Research Associates, and ENPHRONT. Nearly a decade ago, the HOPE VI program was launched to address the most troubled portion of the public housing stock, the small percentage of public housing sites that were “severely distressed.” HOPE VI is a competitive grant program, under which public housing authorities (PHAs), local entities that administer federal housing programs, apply to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for funding to redevelop or demolish public housing sites. While it was intended to be a solution to severely distressed public housing, HOPE VI has been the source of new problems as serious as those it was created to address.

"Student Mobility: How Some Children Get Left Behind" Winter 2003 issue of The Journal of Negro Education, guest editors Chester Hartman (PRRAC Director of Research) and Todd Michael Franke (UCLA). High student mobility is a serious, underrecognized education problem. Classrooms, particularly those in low-income and minority areas, may have 50-75% turnover within the academic year. Homeless, immigrant, farmworker, special education, and foster children are especially impacted. The major education reforms put forward — smaller classes and schools, lower teacher/student ratios, better-trained teachers, improved physical plant and facilities, increased emphasis on testing and accountability, etc. — all are undermined, if not made irrelevant, if the classroom is a revolving door. Stable students, teachers, administrators, and the school itself all suffer.

This 177-page special issue of the JNE stresses the role of housing instability as the principal cause of school instability, focusing as well on internal school factors. Individual chapters treat the special conditions and needs of various student subpopulations affected. And a series of five "best practices" case studies — from Chicago, Minneapolis, Texas, California, and Department of Defense schools — illustrate the range of needed reforms. This pdf file includes an order form and the Table of Contents.

"Millennial Misfire" (July/Aug 2002) Shelterforce by Chester Hartman is a review of the Millennial Housing Commission’s report, “ Meeting Our Nation’s Housing Challenges.”

"High Classroom Turnover: How Children Get Left Behind" (May 2002) by Chester Hartman is a chapter appearing in Rights at Risk: Equality in an Age of Terrorism, the biannual report of the Citizens' Commission on Civil Rights. The Citizens' Commission, chaired by PRRAC Board member William L. Taylor, issued, on Lincoln's birthday ("Is the Republican Party still the party of Lincoln?") the 7th in its series of biannual reports chronicling "the progress of the incumbent administration, executive branch agencies and Congress in carrying out both their moral and legal duties to end discrimination and advance civil rights and opportunities for all Americans." The new report, edited by Dianne M. Piche, William L. Taylor & Robin A. Reed, contains 21 chapters, covering education, the courts, housing, political participation, affirmative action and employment, justice, lesbian and gay rights, and the digital divide. Among the other contributors are PRRAC Board Chair John Boger ("The New Legal Attack on Educational Diversity in America's Elementary & Secondary Schools") and PRRAC Board member john a. powell ("Urban Fragmentation as a Barrier to Equal Opportunity"). The 350-page report is available for $15 ($10 low-income/students) from the Citizens' Commission on Civil Rights, 2000 M St. NW, #400, Washington, DC 20036, 202/659-5565. The report is also available on the Commission's website at http://www.cccr.org/RightsAtRisk.htm