Steven Gregory is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Africana Studies at New York University.
Review
"Gregory employs the discipline of anthropology to penetrate the many myths and clichés that obscure
the dynamics of black life in an urban community. Corona is the perfect subject for his investigation.... Black
Corona is ideal for the community organizer, neighborhood historian, or academic.... [A] well-researched and beautifully
written study."
--Bill Batson, New York Amsterdam News
"Gregory gives an up-close look at community organization in a black middle-class community that defies stereotypes
by outsiders about urban pathology and the disorganization and chaos that are supposed to exist in black neighborhoods."
--Booklist
"[Gregory] investigates class within race, race within place, and place within politics. . . . [He] makes
important points about the structuring of black identities in reaction to racial, class, and gender hierarchies.
. . ."
--Mary Patillo-McCoy, American Journal of Sociology
"Gregory's analysis of race, ethnic, and class contacts and cooperation is clear and well written. . .
. [A] welcome addition to the sparse ethnographic literature on middle-class African America."
--Choice
"While asserting that race and economics are important elements in the mix that creates and perpetuates poor
communities, [Gregory] believes poverty at root is a political problem regardless of race. A well-documented analysis
that counters prevailing views. . . ."
--Library Journal
"An excellent case study and microanalysis of a single community. It is a well written and documented confutation
of black stereotypes and their communities. . . . A classic piece of urban anthropology."
--Wilbur C. Rich, Isis
Princeton University Press Web Site, October, 2000
Summary
In Black Corona, Steven Gregory examines political culture and activism in an African-American neighborhood
in New York City. Using historical and ethnographic research, he challenges the view that black urban communities
are "socially disorganized." Gregory demonstrates instead how working-class and middle-class African
Americans construct and negotiate complex and deeply historical political identities and institutions through struggles
over the built environment and neighborhood quality of life. With its emphasis on the lived experiences of African
Americans, Black Corona provides a fresh and innovative contribution to the study of the dynamic interplay of race,
class, and space in contemporary urban communities. It questions the accuracy of the widely used trope of the dysfunctional
"black ghetto," which, the author asserts, has often been deployed to depoliticize issues of racial and
economic inequality in the United States. By contrast, Gregory argues that the urban experience of African Americans
is more diverse than is generally acknowledged and that it is only by attending to the history and politics of
black identity and community life that we can come to appreciate this complexity.
This is the first modern ethnography to focus on black working-class and middle-class life and politics. Unlike
books that enumerate the ways in which black communities have been rendered powerless by urban political processes
and by changing urban economies, Black Corona demonstrates the range of ways in which African Americans continue
to organize and struggle for social justice and community empowerment. Although it discusses the experiences of
one community, its implications resonate far more widely.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
PART ONE
Chapter 1. Introduction
Chapter 2. Making Community
Chapter 3. The Movement
Chapter 4. The State and the War on Politics
PART TWO
Chapter 5. Race and the Politics of Place
Chapter 6. A Piece of the Rock
PART THREE
Chapter 7. Up Against the Authority
Chapter 8. The Politics of Hearing and Telling
Chapter 9. Conclusion
