Synopses & Reviews
The Young Lords, who originated as a Chicago street gang fighting gentrification and unfair evictions in Puerto Rican neighborhoods, burgeoned into a national political movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s, with headquarters in New York City and other centers in Philadelphia, Boston, Los Angeles, and elsewhere in the northeast and southern California. Part of the original Rainbow Coalition with the Black Panthers and Young Patriots, the politically radical Puerto Ricans who constituted the Young Lords instituted programs for political, social, and cultural change within the communities in which they operated.
The Young Lords offers readers the opportunity to learn about this vibrant organization through their own words and images, collecting an array of their essays, journalism, photographs, speeches, and pamphlets. Organized topically and thematically, this volume highlights the Young Lords' diverse and inventive activism around issues such as education, health care, gentrification, police injustice and gender equality, as well as self-determination for Puerto Rico.
In recovering these rare written and visual materials, Darrel Enck-Wanzer has given voice to the lost chorus of the Young Lords, while providing an indispensable resource for students, scholars, activists, and others interested in learning about this influential grassroots “street political” organization.
Review
“Offers a long-awaited introduction to the ideals and actions of this vibrant revolutionary organization. In so doing it opens a window on to the life of an entire community, and on a unique era of radical movement history. This carefully assembled collection promises to be the documentary sourcebook on the Young Lords Party for years to come.”
-Juan Flores,New York University
Review
"This definitive sourcebook (sic) compiled by Enck-Wanzer, who wrote his doctoral dissertation on the subject, is a tour de force. He provides a helpful and brief chronicle of the evolution of the Young Lords in his introduction and the foreword by Morales and Oliver is an inspiring personal retrospective... This reader brings together an impressive collection of primary source materials that let the Young Lords speak for themselves and transport the reader to another time and place."-National Institute for Latino Policy, Book Notes,
Review
"The collection of essays, speeches, pamphlets and photographs created by Young Lords members, primarily in New York and on the East Coast, includes the organization's 13-point platform and rules of discipline. The book covers the group's activism in education, health care, police injustice and gender equality."-,The North Texan Alumni Magazine
Review
"'The Jews thus became for Grant and his harassed officers a convenient symbol of all the frustrations and annoyances with which they were contending,' Stephen Ash writes in an essay in New York University Press' intriguing new anthology."-America's Civil War,
Review
"I predict that Jews and the Civil War: A Reader will very quickly become one of the definitive scholarly texts on the Jewish role in the Civil War. Any one of the seventeen articles could stand alone as a fascinating socio-cultural history of the period... Each article is assiduously researched and followed by detailed endnotes identifying the source of the information... I recommend this book to all readers who enjoy Jewish history. Many of the articles can easily serve as springboards for teachers of American and Jewish history who want to provide articles depicting the Civil War through memoirs, letters, diaries, rabbinical talks, and popular magazines as well as traditional historical sources."-Jewish Book World,
Review
“In gathering together these widely scattered essays, Sarna and Mendelsohn reveal that we know much more than we ever thought we did about Jews and this great conflict. Just as the Civil War divided Americans, it divided Jews. Civil War buffs, historians, and anyone interested in the cataclysm which rent the nation will embrace this marvelous collection depicting how one group of Americans experienced that terrible time.”
-Pamela S. Nadell,Inaugural Patrick Clendenen Professor of History, American University
Review
“An excellent volume which contains many of the most authoritative scholarly essays on American Jewry and the Civil War. The volume sheds historical light on a wide range of fascinating subjects including Jews and slavery, Jews and Abolition, Jews in the military, and much more. Readers will be especially grateful for the learned and insightful editorial introductions that serve as forewords to each of the thematic sections. All those interested in the Civil War will want to own a copy of this rich resource. It is truly a cornucopia of historical insight.”
-Gary P. Zola,,Professor of the American Jewish Experience at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and Executive Director of The Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati, Ohio
Review
"Jews and the Civil War is an invaluable one-stop compendium, an essential and illuminating trove, much needed as we launch the Civil War Sesquicentennial."-Harold Holzer,Moment Magazine
Synopsis
At least 8,000 Jewish soldiers fought for the Union and Confederacy during the Civil War. A few served together in Jewish companies while most fought alongside Christian comrades. Yet even as they stood “shoulder-to-shoulder” on the front lines, they encountered unique challenges.
In Jews and the Civil War, Jonathan D. Sarna and Adam Mendelsohn assemble for the first time the foremost scholarship on Jews and the Civil War, little known even to specialists in the field.
These accessible and far-ranging essays from top scholars are grouped into seven thematic sections--Jews and Slavery, Jews and Abolition, Rabbis and the March to War, Jewish Soldiers during the Civil War, The Home Front, Jews as a Class, and Aftermath--each with an informative contextual introduction by the editors. Together they reappraise the impact of the war on Jews in the North and the South, offering a rich and fascinating portrait of the experience of Jewish soldiers and civilians from the home front to the battle front.
About the Author
Jonathan D. Sarna is the Joseph H. and Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History at Brandeis University and Chief Historian of the National Museum of American Jewish History. He has written, edited or co-edited more than twenty-five books, including
American Judaism: A History, winner of the “Jewish Book of the Year” award from the Jewish Book Council.
Adam Mendelsohn is Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies and Director of the Center for Southern Jewish History and Culture at the College of Charleston.