Poverty Rebels

Black and Brown Protest in Post–Civil Rights America

Casey D. Nichols

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2025
• Print ISBN: 9781469684673, 9781469684666
• eBook ISBN: 9781469684680
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: African American Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

In 1960s Los Angeles, a powerful network within Black and Chicana/o organizations transformed the War on Poverty and Model Cities program. Black and Brown activists worked together and separately to use the US federal government’s War on Poverty as an opportunity to establish programs that would counteract the neglect that led to underfunded schools, inadequate housing, and a lack of community institutions. Casey Nichols examines this diverse group of intentional and unintentional collaborators she calls “poverty rebels,” which included politicians, activists, youth, professionals, community members, and local people.

Poverty rebels leveraged federal antipoverty funding to work around the limited capacity of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to address the dual impact of race and class in African American and Mexican American communities. They understood that unequal policy had created their urban realities and sought to redefine antipoverty legislation in a way that improved their material lives. Drawing on a wide range of sources, including local and federal government documents, oral histories, and organizational records, Nichols examines vital links between the nation’s social and political spheres. Ultimately, she argues that Black-Brown relations gained greater national significance during the mid-1960s amid important civil rights victories and social policies to address so-called disadvantaged communities. By coming into social and political proximity, African Americans and Mexican Americans constructed a national dialogue about Black-Brown relations that had shared benefits, and that continues to shape policy debates today.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Tracing the Historical Roots of Black-Brown Relations
• Chapter One. Black and Brown Los Angeles
• Chapter Two. Black Noise, Brown Invisibility
• Chapter Three. The Economic Opportunity Generation
• Chapter Four. Black and Brown at the White House
• Chapter Five. Su Lucha Es Mi Lucha (Your Battle Is My Battle)
• Chapter Six. The Magna Carta to Liberate Our Cities: African Americans, Mexican Americans, and the Model Cities Program in Los Angeles
• Epilogue: The War on Poverty’s Legacy in Black and Brown America
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index