Introduction

The three decades following the end of World War II marked a time of extraordinary change for America's cities. Economic, social and environmental shifts begun during the war escalated in depth and breadth in the 1950s and 1960s. Spurred by federal policies that favored expansion and embraced the automobile, city-dwellers with the means and the pedigree (white, middle and upper-class) fled the city for an expanding "megalopolis" of suburbs linked by arterial interstate highways. Elite city planners, typified by New York's Robert Moses, saw the traditional city center as an impediment to traffic and envisioned a system of bridges and highways cris-crossing Manhattan Island. Beginning with the 1949 Housing Act, federal funds for slum clearance and urban renewal manifested themselves in New York's behemoth-scale projects from the United Nations to Co-op City. Between 1949 and 1960, at least half a million New Yorkers were displaced from their homes. Although some low-income housing projects were constructed, traditional neighborhoods cleared through "slum-clearance" directives were mostly replaced with privately-constructed middle and upper-income housing and minority groups were often forced by racist real estate markets into ghettos in Harlem, the Bronx and Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn.

Of course, historical trends and demographic shifts are far easier to see in hindsight than they are in the moment. In 1945, New York City looked like an industrial powerhouse poised to continue thriving. African Americans from the South and Puerto Ricans were drawn by the promise of well-paying industrial jobs. Simultaneously, a paradigm shift in interstate trucking was already acting like a new star, melting industrial jobs into more sparsely populated regions of the country where industry could be undertaken on a grander scale. These new communities, drawn by the city's promise, remained in its over-stressed neighborhoods, de-prioritzed by the highway-minded city governors.

It would become quite clear by the mid-1950s and 1960s that the city was imperfect and in need. Its communities were in need of empowerment; its institutional racism needed to be eradicated; its people needed to be united. This very need, caused by the chaos of demographic and post-war political shifts shown like a beacon across the hinterland. Tangled up in this chaos and need was a degree of freedom and responsibility craved by young people raised and sheltered in the safe and homogenous America idealized by the builders of suburbs and highways.

Drawn by a desire to get involved, to use their "privilege" to help those seen to be most in need, and simultaneously seeking a community that would embrace their desire for "something different" young people came to the city in the 1950s and 1960s.

Their experiences are distinct but their context is shared. These are their voices.