African Americans and Homelessness: Moving Through History

Author(s): Roberta Ann Johnson

Source: Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 40, No. 4 (MARCH 2010), pp. 583-605
Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.
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 Journal of Black Studies

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Moving Through History

Roberta Ann Johnson
University of San Francisco

The story of African Americans is usually absent from the mainstream text-
book study of homeless people. This research begins to address this absence.
It provides an overview by using eight distinct historic experiences - the
colonial period, Civil War period, cowboys of the west, the tramping years,
the Black migration north, the depression years and New Deal, urban
renewal, and deindustrialization of the American economy - to begin the
process of more fully describing the experience of Black homelessness in
America.

Keywords: Black homeless; African American homeless; runaway slaves;

migration

is challenging to study, and describing Black homeless-

ness is especially difficult because of spotty record keeping.1 In fact,
the story of homeless African Americans is often absent from the usual
textbook study of homeless people (Baum & Burnes, 1993, chap. 6; Jencks,
1994, chap. 6; Rossi, 1989, chap. 2). My research begins to address this
absence by presenting a historic overview, starting with the colonies.

Homelessness in the Colonies

In the 17th century, many poor White Englishmen voluntarily sold them-
selves into servitude to companies such as the London Company to transport
them to America. Others, including vagrants, criminals, and tens of thousands

Author's Note: The author wishes to thank the University of San Francisco for awarding her
an Irvine Curriculum Development Grant to use for research on the African American home-
less experience. The author also wishes to acknowledge the contribution of three USF student
research assistants - Luis Quinonez, Ashley Salcido, and Sumerra Khan.

583

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584 Journal of Black Studies

of political offenders and children, were literally kidnapped from the streets
of London and put on ships to the New World (Brawley, 1970, pp. 21-23).2
Eventually, the Whites who came voluntarily and involuntarily would buy
their way out of servitude. Black servants would not have that option.
"The first Negroes who were brought to the colonies were technically
servants" (Brawley, 1970, p. 23), and "in the beginning, little social dis-
tinction was made in America on account of race" (J. H. Franklin & Moss,
1994, p. 157). But the colonies drifted into what was called "the sterner
system" of slavery (p. 24) and by the mid-17th century large profits from
the lucrative Black slave trade helped move slavery from custom to legal
arrangements.3
During the 17th century, town records show that White communities
were far from generous to all those who were in need.4 In fact, White
colonists condemned other colonists whom they considered undeserving to
homelessness. Paupers, able-bodied men who would not work, were not
assisted. They were driven out of the colony to freeze or starve (Baum &
Burnes, 1993, p. 94).
Technically, Black slaves had "shelter," although agricultural slaves,
according to John Hope Franklin, were "especially poor." They lived in
small and dilapidated, inadequate and uncomfortable huts, with no win-
dows and hardly any furnishings and sometimes without beds (J. H.
Franklin & Moss, 1994). And yet although their living conditions were
woefully deficient, Black slaves were considered part of the "community"
(by the Whites), and, therefore, they were not considered homeless.
On the other hand, Whites generally considered free Blacks to be home-
less and suspect. Their homelessness was "tantamount to a crime: homeless
Black people were 'masterless' and, with rare exceptions, that meant they
were fugitives" (Hopper & Milburn, 1996, p. 124).
Population records showed that the number of U.S. slaves rose steadily,5 and
personal connection (i.e., ownership) with the slaves was widespread in the
South.6 By 1850, 2.8 million slaves worked on farms and plantations; another
400,000 slaves lived in urban settings (Hopper & Milburn, 1996, p. 126).
Life was harsh, and the slave system was brutal (Brawley, 1970, p. 32). It
is not surprising that many slaves committed suicide, and, in increasing
numbers, many slaves ran away. Although textbooks that describe the history
of American homeless do not include them, the large number of runaway
slaves should be considered an early example of American homelessness.
Native Americans often provided a safe haven for homeless Blacks who fled
to the frontier to escape slavery or oppressive laws (Editors of Ebony, 1971).
Runaway Blacks may also have been drawn to Indian communities to inter-
marry because there was a shortage of Black women in the American colonies.

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 Johnson / African American Homelessness 585

There was constant Indian and Black intermingling since at least the
time the first British colonies were established.7 In 1839, for example,
William Jay, first chief justice of the United States, lamented "the warfare
waged against the Seminoie Indians and the blacks residing among them
[italics added]" (Editors of Ebony, 1971, p. 35). In fact, there were so many
African Americans assimilated into the Indian tribal population that a large
portion of today's American Blacks have Indian ancestry.8
Runaway slaves represent an important chapter in America's homeless
history. When slaves ran away, they were "men, women, and children, singly,
in pairs, or in groups" who organized to live in the forests, mountains, and
swamps of the South (J. H. Franklin & Moss, 1994, p. 143). Many runaway
slaves left the South altogether for freedom in the North. Some were assisted
by members of Northern antislavery groups. As early as 1804 in Pennsylvania
and 1815 in Ohio, White groups were helping slaves to freedom (J. H. Franklin
& Moss, 1994, pp. 183-184; Still, 1970; Strother, 1962). The term Underground
Railroad was not given to the effort until 1831 (Strother, 1962, p. 5).9
It is estimated that as many as 100,000 slaves ran away during the early
19th century. Some runaways were shipped through the postal system in
"boxes or chests," and some hid in "steamers and vessels," forced to hide
under boilers and in cramped spaces that allowed for little or no movement
(Still, 1970, pp. 38-44, 67-73, 289-292, 313-314, 632-635).
As evidence that runway slaves were considered by their contemporaries
to be "homeless," the earliest New York City poorhouses, the places that
housed the White homeless in the mid- 18th century, also housed runaway
slaves (Mary Booth, History of the City of New York, 1859, p. 347, in
Hopper & Milburn, 1996, p. 124).
W. E. B. Du Bois provides data on the almshouse population based on race
for the city of Philadelphia. In 1837, 235 of the 1,673 "inmates" of the county
almshouse of Philadelphia (almshouses accommodated the homeless) were
Black. The proportion of homeless Blacks, 14.0%, was twice that of the
Philadelphia Black population, who were just 7.4% of the city's residents at the
time. His data also show that there were more homeless Black women than
homeless Black men and that the homeless women were younger than the men.

The Civil War and the Homeless

Much has been written about how the Civil War dislodged and impover-
ished White Southerners, but the more enormous human tragedy created by
the war was Black homelessness. Though the Civil War might have
promised freedom and hope, it brought immeasurable suffering and home-
lessness to millions of African Americans.

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586 Journal of Black Studies

During the war, hundreds of thousands of African Americans sought

freedom and refuge with the Union troops. While the war was being con-
ducted, Union generals would welcome and help runaway slaves. But
unfortunately, because there were so many runaways, most could not be
helped, and most remained homeless.10
On November 14, 1862, Chaplain John Eaton, on orders from General
Ulysses S. Grant, took charge of all unemployed and homeless fugitive slaves
within the Union lines. Eaton opened a camp in Grand Junction and put the
runaway slaves to work at picking, ginning, and bailing all cotton now out-
standing in the fields. Grant furnished Eaton with money and supplies to
build shelter and supply food to all the homeless Black workers in the camp.
Chaplain Eaton expanded opportunities and soon had the Black workers
providing labor, not just for the federal government but for private citizens
as well. Soon camps were growing throughout the Union lines. However
successful these efforts seem, nevertheless only a fraction of those who
sought help could be accommodated. For example, at a Memphis Union
Army camp in April 1863, "more than 20,000 people had entered into
Eaton's organization and at one of the camps in Memphis, 5,000 were
working for the military but 2,000 were huddled in sheets and alleys and
were living by begging or vice" (Slaughter, 1969, p. 35).
This official military policy of aid and employment continued through-
out the war, and many other Union generals succeeded in constructing orga-
nizations like Chaplain Eaton's. These organizations did ease somewhat the
general situation of homelessness and poverty. Nevertheless, even the
African Americans lucky enough to have paid work could still have been
homeless because they were constantly moving without the accommodation
of tents to house them. Often Black workers went for months until some of
the lucky ones received the necessary materials with which to build shelter
for themselves. For most, however, the wages they earned were spent
mostly feeding families who trailed the workers wherever they were sent.
The former slaves escaped their master's plantation only to find themselves
homeless in a world fraught with uncertainty.

Black Homelessness and Reconstruction

By the war's end, most newly freed slaves were basically homeless.
Linda Slaughter, in The Freedmen of the South, described their near starva-
tion and miserable plight as "hopeless" and "lamentable." She described
how they were perishing from lack of shelter and crowded into Southern

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 Johnson / African American Homelessness 587

cities and former army camps (Slaughter, 1969, p. 91). What is astonishing
is not just their destitute and mostly homeless condition but also that these
former slaves were seen not as Americans but as "refugees" (p. 91).
Added together, there were easily at least 1 million homeless Black
Americans scattered all throughout the South, and many estimated the number
to be closer to 4 million at the end of the Civil War (Slaughter, 1969, p. 92).
The Freedmen's Bureau, a tool of the Reconstruction period, was assigned the
task of bringing people to work through farming and various jobs.11
President Lincoln ordered that in the tax sales of land formerly held by
Southern Whites, some small parcels should be offered to Blacks. However,
because they lacked sufficient resources, Blacks were able to purchase very
little in these tax sales of land.12 And then, when President Andrew Johnson
assumed office after Lincoln's assassination, he further blocked these sales
by immediately starting to issue executive orders to agencies to help restore
the economy of the South to the former rebels. Although his efforts were
met with opposition by those who wanted Reconstruction and reform,
President Andrew Johnson's actions and policies undermined the Freedmen's
Bureau, leaving the approximately 4 million former slaves in the same
position they were in before the Civil War.
"In the end . . . Reconstruction failed, and many historians are inclined to
blame its demise on the failure of land reform in the South" (Wharton, in
E. Foner, 1970, p. 208). The promise of economic equality was never
achieved and instead, during this period, the foundation of African American
economic dependence as tenant farmers and day laborers was established
(Mandel, 1992, pp. 33, 39). In the 1930s during the Depression, this would
lead to the creation of a permanent class of homeless migrant workers.
In sum, after the Civil War, the newly freed Blacks were left without
means and were forced into contracts, usually with their former slave
masters, to work the land as they did before, but this time by contractual
agreement. With contracts, they were living in the same squalor they had been
living in when they were slaves. But the contracts provided no guarantee of
shelter or health provisions, and many of these tenant farmers were homeless.

Black Cowboys of the West

Even though they are not adequately recognized, many African Americans
traveled west to become cowboys. American mountain men and cowboys,
although celebrated and the subject of legend, have also been considered
part of America's vagabond and homeless history (Baum & Burnes, 1993,
p. 94; Miller, 1991, chap. 2). During and just after the Civil War, thousands

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588 Journal of Black Studies

of African American men, slave and free, left their communities for the
homeless life of the cowboy. Some came from the Southern states of
Arkansas, Louisiana, and Alabama, but most came from Texas. Durham
and Jones (1965, p. 117) say they may have numbered upward of 5,000
men. During their time working the range, they started their drives in Texas
and worked outward toward Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas,
Nebraska, Wyoming, Montana, and the Dakotas.
For Durham and Jones (1965), although they are under-recognized, Black
cowboys once "rode all the trails, driving the millions of cattle before them.
Some died in stampedes, some froze to death, and some drowned" (p. 1). On
drives through the unmapped lands and the rough terrains of the developing
states, these homeless men experienced some of the most uncomfortable and
dangerous circumstances, such as weather extremes and snakes.13
The best night's sleep these homeless cowboys would get was in jails in
the early cow towns. Black cowboys rode the trails along with Mexicans
and Indians. They joined White cowboys to ride into the brush to hunt for
wild cattle; life was bleak and stark (Durham & Jones, 1965, p. 25).
In general, there was little comfort for the cowboys between the cattle
runs. At the end of the trail, "cowboys found only a few people and a few
shacks" (Durham & Jones, 1965, p. 62). At this time, Black cowboys "num-
bered in the thousands . . . hunted wild horses, wolves, and a few of them
[even] hunted men" (Durham & Jones, 1965, p. 1). Black cowboys,
although usually left out, are part of America's homeless history.

The Tramping Years

Also absent from most historic descriptions, in the late 19th century
Blacks participated in the American tramping experience. The period
between the Civil War and World War I stands out as an era and heyday for
the movement of millions of male transients and seasonal workers. This
was a period of "men on the tramp." The new term tramp was first used
after the Civil War to refer to men who were without home and without
family. Tramp was defined as "all idle persons ... not having any visible
means of support . . . wandering about . . . and not giving a good account
of themselves" (Ringenbach, 1973, p. 19).
The tramping years represented "a distinctive - and sometimes defiant
form of homelessness" (Hopper & Milburn, 1996, p. 124). In the 1870s, when
tramps first appeared in significant numbers, Farm Journal compared them to
destructive pests such as the locus (Ringenbach, 1973, p. 3). Some newspapers
even spoke of "tramp evil" and blamed all sorts of social ills on them.

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 Johnson / African American Homelessness 589

Although tramps had a reputation for begging, stealing, and threatening,

the truth is that most tramps were merely on the road in search of work and
a little adventure. There were so many "men on the tramp" because of the
enormous demand for mobile labor.14 "Western exploitation and growth
created a need for men - all kinds of men; men to work the mines, and log,
and punch cows, and reap crops, and build railroads - 200,000 miles of rail-
roads" (Miller, 1991, p. xix). For Kim Hopper and Jim Baumohl, American
"economic expansion and modernization demanded legions of rootless
workers" (p. 7). Their numbers were large. According to Ringenbach
(1973), "In 1873 - 1874 the American population was about 40 million
people, three million of these people were thought to be tramps" (p. 1 1).
Winter brought many of the homeless tramping men into the cities in
search of warmer and safer places. If they couldn't afford the cheap sleep-
ing facilities, they sought doorways, empty warehouses, dock facilities, and
alleys. To reach the cities, tramps took "great risks" riding the rails
(Ringenbach, 1973, p. 7).
At the turn of the century, every city had a well-established area where
its homeless men congregated, ate, and slept, including these large numbers
of tramps. These areas were sometimes referred to as "skid rows" (the term
derived from Seattle's skid road),15 but at the time these areas were more
commonly referred to, by the tramping men, as in "the main stem"
(Schneider, 1986, pp. 169-173). A great many tramps ended up in New York
City, where there were as many as "450,000 [homeless] people lodged by
the police station houses during the winter of 1874 to 1875." Lodgers slept
on planks on the unheated and crowded floors of the police stations
(Schneider, 1986, p. 10).
Tramping was a dominant feature of this period of American expansion
and growth. In his autobiography, sociologist Neis Anderson (1975) vividly
described traveling as a "tramp" by freight train from Billings, Montana, to
Omaha, Nebraska, in 1907. He reported that his companion stood on a cor-
ner of the main stem (skid row) and "estimated that he could see at least a
thousand men on the streets and sidewalks" (p. 85).
According to Hopper and Milburn (1996), "In the late, 19th-century . . .
available records show that African Americans were a significant presence
among arrested tramps, lodging house residents, and transients in cities as
diverse as Philadelphia, Kansas City, and Washington D.C." (p. 124).
Furthermore, "African American men make frequent appearances in road
memoirs of this period" (p. 124). In general, however, historians have
tended to overlook Black tramps when writing about this period because of
oversight or because of faulty and incomplete records.

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590 Journal of Black Studies

We do know that it was harder for African American tramps to survive

because, even in this context, they were less socially accepted (Ringenbach,
1973). Black tramps found it more difficult to find lodging in the few areas
that would accommodate tramps, and it was harder for Black men to get
assistance from passersby by begging. Nevertheless, it appears that Blacks
were tramping in sizable numbers. During this period, because New York
attracted so many homeless African Americans, the city was sometimes
referred to as the "Black Hole of Calcutta" (Ringenbach, 1973, p. 10).

The Black Migration North

The movement of Southern Black Americans northward started gradu-

ally in the aftermath of the Civil War. Sixty thousand migrated north
between 1870 and 1880, 70,000 the following decade, and 168,000
between 1890 and 1900 (Mandel, 1992, p. 26). Many more were to follow.
Although circumstances seemed set for widespread homelessness, the
numbers of Black homeless at this time were not as large as might have
been expected.
Concurrent with Black migration from the South was a European immi-
gration that was putting huge pressure on the housing supply in the North.
Because of residential segregation, however, housing available for the
Black migrants was even more limited than for others (Massey & Dentón,
1993). These circumstances caused many Blacks to totter on the verge of
homelessness. They became what current social scientists refer to as the
"protohomeless" (see the introduction in Wolch & Dear, 1993).
By 1970, 7 million African Americans had moved from the rural South
to cities in the North. In New Jersey, during this wave of migration, many
Black migrants sought agricultural work. According to Hahamovitch
(1997), "New Jersey received more of those migrants than any other state"
(p. 33). In fact, there were so many African American migrants in New
Jersey that the state was called the "Georgia of the North."
The city of Chicago also strongly felt the impact of the Black migration
northward. In the early part of the 20th century, Chicago meat packers
actively recruited Southern Blacks to Chicago, and Chicago's "Southside"
began to be called "North Mississippl."
The Black housing experience in the North could be characterized in two
ways - overcrowded and overpriced. Chicago provides a useful illustration
when thousands of African Americans lived on the verge of homelessness.
Segregation limited housing opportunities, and city records document the
unsatisfied demand by Blacks for housing. On a single day in 1918, there

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 Johnson / African American Homelessness 59 1

were 664 African American applications submitted for only 55 housing

units. At that time, there were places in Chicago where up to six Black
families lived in apartment units designed for only one family. Segregation
was a strong factor. The African American homeless male transients in
Chicago were also restricted to segregated "colored men's hotels" (Hopper
&Milburn, 1996, p. 124).
Although Philadelphia had been a center of abolitionist activities,
according to Philip Foner (1978), it was "rigidly segregated" (p. 19). W. E. B.
Du Bois offers extensive descriptions of the Black communities in
Philadelphia in 1910. Just as in Chicago, during the early part of the 20th
century, Black families in Philadelphia competed for scarce housing.
All the newcomers pouring into the Northern cities during the great
migration lived in poor conditions. Du Bois (1973, p. 58) offers detailed
information for the seventh ward, where approximately one fourth of the
Blacks in Philadelphia lived. In the mid- 1890s, of the more than 2,000
Black families Du Bois surveyed, only 13.7% had access to bathrooms.
And of those, many shared what meager facilities there were, and hot water
was not supplied to bathtubs. As many as 30% "of the Negro families of ...
[the seventh] ward [lacked] some of the very elementary accommodations
necessary to health and decency" (p. 293). For most, they had to get their
water at a hydrant in an alley. Surprising, nevertheless, Du Bois's writing at
this time suggests that these "tenement abominations of Philadelphia are
perhaps better than the vast tenement houses of New York" (p. 294).
By 1910, 40,000 Black people lived in Philadelphia. Their rent for hous-
ing was above their means, sometimes representing three fourths of the
family's total income. Although about half of those living in the seventh
ward were on record as paying $10 or less per month for rent, these rental
figures are misleadingly low because of the large number of people who,
according to Du Bois, were paying subrent for part of a rental unit or had
created boarding house arrangements (chap. 15).
Blacks were especially disadvantaged. With a limited supply of available
housing for Blacks because of racial segregation, real estate agents took
advantage. Furthermore, the work most African Americans did was as "pur-
veyors to the rich - working in private houses, in hotels, large stores, etc."
(Du Bois, 1973, p. 296). They needed to live in particular locations, close to
the center of town. Therefore, there was extensive overcrowding. In fact,
there were cases of as many as 10 persons living in a room. Of course, that
level of overcrowding represented the worst cases.
Du Bois provides information on Black homelessness that is surprising.
It appears that Black homelessness, even under these conditions, was

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592 Journal of Black Studies

proportionately low. His statistics include data on persons without shelter

who had applied for and had gotten lodging at the "station houses." Police
station lodging "was typically a room set aside in the precinct house for
holding transients overnight" (Baumohl, 1996, p. 9). The total annual
number of applicants for station house lodging in Philadelphia more than
tripled, rising from nearly 14,000 in 1891 to 46,000 in 1896. But the per-
centages of homeless applicants who were "Negroes" during this period,
according to Du Bois (1973), merely doubled from 2.7% in 1891 to 5.0% in
1896 (p. 271).
Of those arrested for vagrancy (i.e., arrested because they were home-
less), Du Bois (1973) provides statistics for a 10-year period, 1887 to 1896.
During this 10-year period, the total number of arrests was around 600 per
year, and the percentage of Black arrests stayed at less than 10.0% of the
total (p. 271). Although Blacks were only 3.76% of Philadelphia's popula-
tion, just less than 10.0% should be considered a low vagrancy arrest rate,
not because of their poverty but because, according to Du Bois, Blacks
were more likely to be arrested for vagrancy than were Whites.
Indeed, some Blacks were homeless during the period of the great
migration. Affordable housing was scarce, and Blacks competed for their
limited supply. What is surprising is not that there was Black homelessness
but that there was so little of it considering the challenges they faced.

The Depression Years and New Deal

Blacks were hit hardest by the Great Depression, which produced wide-
spread hardship and homelessness. In 1930,

somewhere between 12 and 15 million were unemployed, one family out of

seven was on public or private relief, 4,600 banks had failed, half of
Michigan's automobile factories were shut down, textile looms in the South
were silent, farmers let their crops rot in the fields . . . and in New England's
men and women worked for one dollar a week. (Barber, 1972, p. 233)

African Americans were hit "earliest and most severely" by the economic
collapse.
In many Northern cities, there were a substantial number of Black men
who were homeless. "By the winter of 1932-1933, nearly one-quarter of
Philadelphia's homeless transient were black, as were one-tenth of Chicago's
sheltered men, one-fifth of Buffalo's [non-seaman] . . . transients, and one-
sixth of New York City's public shelter clientele" (Hopper & Milburn,

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 Johnson / African American Homelessness 593

1996, p. 124). In all these cities, the percentage of Black homeless was
higher than the percentage of Blacks in the population as a whole, although,
in the case of Chicago, not by much.16
During this period, African Americans suffered, not just because they were
poorly paid marginal workers or because they had lost their employment but
because discrimination in public and private assistance prevented them from
getting their fair share of aid. "Many private agencies excluded blacks alto-
gether from their soup kitchens, and some communities gave unemployed
black families less assistance than whites" or unfairly distributed relief
money (E. Foner, 1970, p. 388). There was discrimination because project
design and allocation of funds were in local hands. Examples abound.17
New Deal programs' discriminatory practices were pervasive and wide-
spread. The National Recovery Act and the Tennessee Valley Authority are
apt examples.18
The Works Project Administration (WPA) also failed in its mission of
distributing relief equitably. Southern states were allowed to redefine what
unemployment meant so they could exclude from the unemployed category
all sharecroppers and surplus day laborers.
In 1930, 56% of the U.S. Black population still lived in rural America,
and according to the census, 40% of U.S. Black wage earners were in agri-
cultural work. Georgia, for example, though responsible for so much of the
earlier Northern migration, had lost only 5% of its population to Northern
cities (Hahamovitch, 1997, p. 89).
The agricultural sector of society was especially hard hit by the
Depression. Although 25% of the nation's population were farmers in 1933,
they earned only 7% of the total national income (Wolters, 1970, p. 4). And
rural Blacks were much worse off than were rural Whites. Based on a study
of 646 cotton plantations, Blacks earned 73% of what Whites made
(Wolters, 1970, p. 8). "Southern Negro farm tenants and wage laborers were
the most impoverished major group of farm workers in the United States"
(Wolters, 1970, p. 79). During the Depression, the average annual income
for a Black sharecropping family was $295; for the Black day-laboring fam-
ily it was $175. By 1938, the huge majority of the 1.2 million displaced
workers in need of some sort of relief were Black (Wolters, 1970, p. 8).
The New Deal's Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) program helped
the White landowners, especially in the cotton belt, but it caused more
Black tenant farmers to become homeless. The AAA authorized payments
to farm owners who pledged to restrict their production. Reducing production
forced tenant farmers off the land, and they were forced to become migrant
workers and day laborers. Vast numbers of displaced tenant farmers, along

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594 Journal of Black Studies

with their families, had to move constantly to find work. During the 1930s,
fully 192,000 Negro farm tenants were displaced (Wolters, 1970, p. 79).
Those who became day laborers became a source of extremely cheap
labor for plantation owners. They required no maintenance costs such as shel-
ter, food, and other supplies, and because there were so many day laborers
they accepted miserable wages to survive. The temporary worker populations
were forced into moving for seasonal work, becoming day laborers for a sea-
son, and after it was over they were forced to go on relief. But benefits from
New Deal programs were inadequate because the New Deal programs such
as the WPA were being administered locally, and Southern Whites controlled
the rules of implementation.
Between 1933 to 1935, the White local administrators who ran the New
Deal programs, provided the majority of the money to poor White farmers or
workers. Blacks composed 41% of all rural families in the eastern cotton belt
alone, but they represented only 35% of all rural families on relief in 1935
(M.Franklin, 1985, pp. 11-12).
Many Black tenant farmers were literally homeless; a roof over their
heads meant just a sheet of tin or metal or even just a large tree that pro-
vided shade. Some relief officials rationalized Black homelessness as
acceptable. Blacks, they thought, should feel comfortable living outdoors.
One anonymous official of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration
was quoted as saying that "local relief agents were more inclined to favor
whites because the Negro is better adjusted to the open country environ-
ment and is accustomed to getting along on less" (M. Franklin, 1985).
Georgia, during the 1930s, produced the starkest example of Black home-
lessness. After thousands of poor Black tenant farmers and farm laborers
were evicted, they were unemployed, and having few options many were
pressured to migrate to Florida or New Jersey as seasonal farm workers who
were paid as low as 3 cents per field bag (Hahamovitch, 1997, p. 134).
A decade before, the Florida Everglades had been drained, making hun-
dreds of thousands of acres of land available for farming. Now, when cheap
farm laborers were needed, this out-of-state work appeared to be their only
choice. Thousands from Georgia migrated year-round. They were "perma-
nent transients who had no sharecrop arrangement to return to, no state of
residence, and no home to speak of (Hahamovitch, 1997, pp. 114-115).
They were homeless. According to estimates made by the Florida Industrial
Commission, by 1940, 40,000 to 60,000 of these farm labor migrants were
coming to Florida annually (Hahamovitch, 1997, p. 125).
Thus, the combination of evictions from land and home, seasonal, unre-
liable, and underpaid work, and local White control of any possible federal

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 Johnson / African American Homelessness 595

relief made the rural Black American vulnerable to starvation and home-
lessness. During the Depression, although Northern cities provided at least
some public shelter for many of their impoverished Black citizens, the rural
South made no such commitment.

Urban Renewal

Urban renewal contributed to Black homelessness in its design and its

impact. The theory was that by beautifying the city housing would also be
improved. Ironically, although urban renewal was presented as a pillar of
the war on poverty for African Americans, it caused their homelessness.
The process of urban renewal contributed to Black homelessness by reduc-
ing the number of affordable housing units available to them. Almost two
thirds of the slum units that were removed were occupied by Blacks; once
cleared out, Blacks were forced to double up in housing units in the remain-
ing slum areas (Bellush & Hausknecht, 1967, p. 467). A 1961 study of urban
renewal projects in 41 cities showed that 60% of the dispossessed tenants were
moved into other slums (Bellush & Hausknecht, 1967, p. 467). Urban renewal
occasionally even created new ghettoes, when too many tenants crowded into
one area and the buildings and the area rapidly deteriorated.
By 1967, urban renewal was in its prime, and the government spent
millions of dollars to provide for the clearing of slums, the clearing of aban-
doned buildings, and the construction of freeways. In fact, by 1967, urban
renewal had destroyed 404,000 housing units, most of which had been
occupied by poor families, whereas only 41,580 housing units were built as
replacements (Friedland, in Squires, 1994, p. 100).
At the same time that poor families were being made homeless as a
result of urban renewal, the public sector was heavily subsidizing down-
town commercial development, homeownership, and freeway construction
programs. Urban renewal was a lucrative program for private developers, as
they bought cleared land from the federal government and began to con-
struct shopping malls and luxury and middle-class housing units.
African Americans were left out of the housing market opportunities in
another way. During the prosperous post-World War II years of the 1950s and
1960s, half of the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and Veterans
Administration (VA) loans financed suburban housing. But most Blacks could
not take advantage; they were not free to buy homes in all neighborhoods. It
was official government policy that properties would be occupied by the same
racial and social classes. In fact, the FHA issued a warning prohibiting

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596 Journal of Black Studies

housing "inharmonious racial groups or nationality groups" (Jackson, 1985,

p. 208, in Squires, 1994, p. 101). This blatant segregationist policy was applied
at a crucial time for home ownership, when there was affordable housing
being developed in the suburbs. These lending policies made it difficult for
African Americans to become property owners in significant numbers.
During the 1950s and 1960s, the urban redevelopment strategies were
created by public-private partnerships that benefited everyone except the
officially intended beneficiaries - poor families. Nearly the entire focus of
redevelopment was on the commercial sector and on the suburbs. Only
0.5% of all federal expenditures for urban renewal between 1949 and 1964
was spent on relocation of families and individuals (Squires, 1994, p. 468).
Because African Americans were hit hardest in urban renewal, many Blacks
nicknamed urban renewal "Negro clearance."
As urban renewal contributed to a significant reduction of available
affordable housing for African Americans, the effect was to increase the
number of African Americans who were precariously doubled up and
tripled up in apartments.
So many Black families lost their homes, it should come as no surprise
that during this period of prosperity there was an increase in the number of
African Americans on skid row.

Skid rows, as described earlier, were a place of residence for homeless

and nearly homeless men. During the post-World War II period, African
American men were unmistakably present in these areas. Their proportion
ranged from 9% to 40%.
Although specific homeless data based on race are not always available,
field workers in New York's skid row area, the Bowery, did report a sub-
stantial minority of African American men present on the Bowery in 1964
(29%), and even more in 1968 (33%) (Squires, 1994, pp. 124, 125).
As high as these numbers may seem, Blacks were generally present in
smaller proportions than poverty and unemployment figures would predict
(Bahr, 1973, p. 105). For researchers, the discrepancy is attributable to the
"robust networks of support (both kin-based and neighborhood-based) that
had long characterized black communities in Northern cities" (Hopper &
Milburn, 1996, p. 124). Du Bois (1973), already referenced, also com-
mented on the resilience of the Black community many decades earlier.
Using data from Philadelphia's seventh ward during the 1890s, he noted
that Negroes were 4% of the population but furnished 8% of the very poor.
He commented on this disparity by suggesting that "considering the eco-
nomic difficulties of the Negro" one would expect an even higher percent-
age of people who were in need and asking for help (p. 273).

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 Johnson / African American Homelessness 597

Deindustrialization of the Economy

In the 1970s, a process that would transform the American economy

from an industry-based to a service economy began. Called deindustrial-
ization, this gradual economic shift dramatically affected the Black com-
munity and further increased the numbers who were homeless. The effects
of deindustrialization challenged the resilience of the "robust network of
support" that held Black families and friendships intact, safe in homes, and
off the streets.
The salient feature of America's industry-based economy had been a tra-
ditional assembly line arrangement with mass production, sometimes
referred to as "Fordism." Its heavy manufacturing sectors included steel,
automobiles, and chemicals. Fordism offered secure jobs, good salaries,
and union protection to millions of non-college graduates.
Starting in the 1970s, a variety of global changes altered international
finance and trade. These changes took place in the international exchange
rate and the monetary systems, and they created advantages (incentives) for
American manufacturers to locate their factories outside the country. In
addition, during this period, the monetary policy creating a strong dollar
made American exports expensive and foreign imports cheap. Cheap
imports competed with the more expensive American-made products and
further hurt the U.S. manufacturing base. As American manufacturing
plants either completely closed down or moved their factories to countries
that offered cheap labor, the U.S. economy was being transformed from
industrial based to service based.
Jennifer Wolch and Michael Dear (1993) described the effects of
these economic changes, which included the demise of the assembly-line
arrangement of "Fordism." "The declining fortunes of the traditional
manufacturing sector," they wrote,

involved wave after wave of plant closures

nationally because of closures or decreased product demand between 1979
and 1985 . . . and well over one million jobs net were lost in the manufactur-
ing sector during the Reagan presidency alone, (p. 4)

Blacks were a significant part of the blue-collar sector. In 1969, 43.0% of

Blacks were blue-collar workers, as compared to 35.5% of Whites (U.S.
Bureau of the Census, 1970, p. 226).
Wolch and Dear's (1993) insightful essay skillfully links this economic
transformation to the dramatic rise in American homelessness. When the

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598 Journal of Black Studies

manufacturing sector gave way to the service economy, although many at

the top end of the service economy were paid handsomely, the majority of
service sector jobs were poorly paid. In fact, "Between, 1979 and 1984, 44
percent of the net new jobs created paid poverty-level wages" and "over
three-quarters of the new jobs created during the 1980s were at minimum-
wage levels" (p. 7).
But the shift to post-Fordism was not only a shift to a service economy,
it also marked a change in the way business did business. "Firms in both
manufacturing and services reorganized their employment practices, hiring
part-time workers to avoid paying fringe benefits and taxes, [and] catego-
rizing jobs as temporary to forestall claims on seniority" (Wolch & Dear,
1993, p. 5). These changes were among the important factors that con-
tributed to rates of long-term joblessness among traditional blue-collar
workers, especially African American males (U.S. Department of Housing
and Urban Development, 1994, p. 27; Wolch & Dear, 1993, p. 6).
In sum, American economic restructuring significantly reduced the
number of well-paid blue-collar jobs. It also significantly reduced job secu-
rity and wage protection. The African American community was especially
vulnerable to feeling the effects of these shifts. These changes followed,
after all, on the heels of decades of urban renewal policies that significantly
reduced the numbers of affordable and available housing units. Because of
deindustrialization, good jobs were scarcer, and because of urban renewal
so were apartments. Then came crack cocaine.

Crack Cocaine

The numbers of homeless African Americans were rising before crack

cocaine hit the streets of the inner cities. By the early 1980s (before crack),
Black men made up the majority of the residents in New York City's public
shelters. Other cities reflected the same trend. It was also reported in 1982
(before crack) that "in 17 studies of homeless women (mostly in shelters),
at least half were minority women, most of whom were mothers with an
average of two children" (Hopper & Milburn, 1996). By the mid-1980s,
because the use of crack cocaine was becoming prevalent as the number of
homeless people escalated, crack cocaine was considered a contributor to
homelessness.
Before the 1980s, the most common agent of substance abuse for the
poor was alcohol (Jencks, 1994, p. 41). This was amply illustrated in skid
row-type areas associated with a population of "drunks and winos."

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 Johnson / African American Homelessness 599

Alcohol was not the only intoxicant available, but it was the most afford-
able. Moreover, alcoholism had been a significant cause of homelessness
for generations (Jencks, 1994, p. 41).
In the mid-1980s this pattern changed. Affordable cocaine became avail-
able in the form of crack cocaine. Although crack produced a shorter high
than powder cocaine, it was also dramatically cheaper (Jencks, 1994, p. 41;
Shaw, Hser, Anglin, & Boyle, 1999). For anywhere from $3 to $10, a sin-
gle hit of the drug could be purchased; this was comparable to a half-pint
of whiskey. So the low price of cocaine made it available to the masses
(Jencks, 1994, p. 41). Within a short time, the drug was available nation-
wide. Crack cocaine "made its debut in the New York area in 1984 . . . soon
spread across the country, becoming a major substance of abuse within the
general population" (Shaw et al., 1999).
Crack cocaine's wide use has been measured by surveys and urine
samples.19 How might crack contribute to homelessness? Heavy drug use
can cause people to be homeless if it makes "marginally employable adults
even less employable, eats up money that would otherwise be available to
pay rent, and makes . . . friends and relatives less willing to shelter" a drug
user (Jencks, 1994, p. 44).
The homeless themselves have suggested the link between crack cocaine
and homelessness. Describing their respondents in a survey conducted in
Dade and Broward Counties in South Florida, Chitwood, Rivers, and
Inciardi (1996) say, "Obsessive use of crack was often identified by the
interviewees as an important factor in how they became homeless" (p. 107).
It is therefore fair to say that crack cocaine has contributed to increasing the
general number of homeless.
Has crack cocaine caused an increase specifically in the number of
Black homeless? This is a more interesting question with a more nuanced
answer. To begin with, crack cocaine is not necessarily a Black person's
drug. Evidence suggests that more Whites use crack cocaine than do Blacks
(Chitwood et al., 1996, p. 59). Furthermore, statistics show that White
youth are more likely to use illegal drugs than are Black youth. A 1988
National Household Survey, sponsored by the National Institute on Drug
Abuse, reported that 26.0% of all White youths but only 18.7% of all Black
youths between the ages of 12 and 17 have tried an illicit drug (Moore,
1995, p. 101). If more Whites use crack cocaine, and if White youth are
more likely to use illegal drugs than Black youth, why is crack cocaine seen
as an African American drug?
Some argue that the "perception of crack as an African American drug
can be traced to the mass media" (Chitwood et al., 1996, p. 58). Crack has

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600 Journal of Black Studies

been portrayed as a Black inner-city epidemic, and journalists have used

photos and stories of crack houses and drug crime to establish the Black-
crack connection with feature news articles. However, although these jour-
nal and magazine articles may exaggerate and possibly mislead, there is
truth in that what they captured does in fact implicate Black homelessness.
Crack cocaine may have had a devastating impact on the African American
community without crack being an African American drug. In fact, as
Chitwood et al. (1996) said, "The problem with these media representations
is that only part of the story has been clearly and accurately documented -
that crack has had a destructive impact on African American inner-city
communities" (p. 58)
Even if fewer Blacks than Whites are addicted, crack may have still been
a problem for the Black community. According to Sharon Moore (1995,
p. 100), there is downward spiraling that occurs when adolescent Black
males become involved in drug use and drug dealing. Drug dealing is
tempting because it is so profitable. Drug addiction can lead to increased
involvement in criminal activity, including prostitution. It can also place a
drug user at an increased risk of contracting AIDS and being arrested and
incarcerated. Drug addiction can alienate a teenager from school, work,
family, and community.
It appears that crack cocaine probably did contribute to Black home-
lessness in the 1980s, even if crack was technically not quite the epidemic
that journalists portrayed. The dysfunctionality of drug users continually
tested the extended family and kinship networks; the drug-related ancillary
problems concerning health, crime, and incarceration stretched the resilience
of an already taxed community.
In sum, in the 1950s and 1960s, urban renewal had reduced the number
of affordable housing units. Starting in the 1970s, America's industrial base
was being eroded, and instead of well-paid union jobs, an emerging service
economy was producing mostly low-paying jobs. Add to this the introduc-
tion of crack cocaine in the mid-1980s, and you have the perfect storm cre-
ating a dramatic rise in Black homelessness.
In 2002, a survey of the largest 25 American cites, sponsored by the U.S.
Conference of Mayors (2002), estimated that 50% of the homeless popula-
tion was African American. In 2005 and again in 2007, Housing and Urban
Development surveys found that although Blacks made up only 12.3% of
the U.S. population, they accounted for fully 45.0% of the sheltered home-
less population (Kwateng, 2007, p. 5A; U.S. Department of Housing and
Urban Development, 2007, p. 31). Approximately half of all homeless
people in America are Black.

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 Johnson / African American Homelessness 601

Conclusion

The American experience of homelessness has not yet been adequately

told because the African American story has often been left out, underre-
ported, or misinterpreted. This article provides a brief overview of Black
homeless history and helps demonstrate three distinct patterns of omission.

LEFT OUT, the first pattern: When Black homelessness was not recognized
at all. For example, runaway slaves during the early 19th century and
newly freed slaves during and after the Civil War were not understood to
be homeless.
UNDERREPORTED, the second pattern: When African Americans were
part of historic phenomena such as the tramping years or Black cowboys
but their unique experiences were left out of most narratives.
MISINTERPRETED, the third pattern: When Blacks themselves are blamed
for homelessness rather than attributing homelessness to public policies
and structural changes such as urban renewal and deindustrialization. As
demonstrated, these policies had a disproportionate negative impact on
Blacks and on Black homelessness. Their link to current Black homeless-
ness needs to be more fully studied.

Notes

1 . The definition of homeless people has included those without family, those who have no
access to private space or no fixed address, and those who sleep in places not intended for
human habitation. Those who currently sleep in public shelters, or, during centuries before,
slept in an almshouse or poor house, are also considered homeless.
2. Starting this narrative on homelessness with the White colonization allows us to include
the ironic fact that many of the first American colonists had been homeless in England.
According to Benjamin Brawley (1970, pp. 21-22), in Social History of the American Negro,
long before the Mayflower and the first slave ships sailed to the colonies, changes in land use
in England created a large homeless class. Starting in the 15th century, more and more English
farms were enclosed for sheep raising, and agricultural laborers who cultivated the land were
"starved out." By the 16th century, with the establishment of the Church of England, condi-
tions became even more acute because the old monasteries that had been the source of chari-
table relief for the poor were now abolished. By the 17th century, the homeless, paupers, and
dissolute persons filled the English jails and workhouses. But as luck would have it, in the 17th
century the English colonies desperately needed "labor," and much of the English homeless
labor force migrated to the colonies.
3. For example, according to John Hope Franklin and Alfred A. Moss (1994), in 1662 the
colony of Virginia was the first to make slavery hereditary by legally establishing that "the
status of a child should be determined by that of the mother" (pp. 23-24). And in 1705, a
Virginia law "provided that a slave might be inventoried as real estate. As property, henceforth
there was nothing to prevent his being separated from his family. Before the law he was no
longer a person but a thing" (p. 26).

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602 Journal of Black Studies

4. According to Henry Miller (1991, p. 26), in On the Fringe: The Dispossessed in

America, providing help to those in need depended on whether the needy were actually
members of the town or community and also depended on whether they were considered part
of the "deserving poor." Peter Rossi (1989, p. 17), in Down and Out in America, illustrated
how closed the communities were when it came to providing help. He quoted from the min-
utes taken at a New England town meeting in which a vote on who could join the community
was discussed. Being able to be part of a town was not automatic but was very desirable
because assistance was linked to residency. For example, the community might help a member
(a longtime resident) who had suffered a calamity with money. More likely, indenturing and
apprenticing were offered. But none of this help was available unless you were a member of
the community.
5. In 1790, there were 700,000 slaves, but by 1830, they numbered more than 2 million,
according to J. H. Franklin and Moss (1994, pp. 122-123). In some states, such as South
Carolina, the slaves greatly outnumbered the Whites, sometimes with a ratio as high as 3 to 1 ,
Mary Frances Berry (1971, p. 3) wrote, and, according to Jay Mandel (1992), "By 1860 the
African American population had risen to about 4.4 million, more than 90 percent of whom
resided in the south" (p. 5).
6. Fully one fourth of the White Southern population owned slaves, and the bulk of the
owners were small farmers. In fact, more than half the slave owners owned 5 slaves or fewer,
according to J. H. Franklin and Moss (1994, p. 123).
7. It is also true, according to Berry (1971), in her book, Black Resistance White Law: A
History of Constitutional Racism in America, that White colonists acted to divide Black
Americans from Native Americans, for example, when they tried to recruit "selected slaves" to
augment their own militia to fight the Yamassee Indians (p. 3). And it is true that some Indian
tribes developed a slavery system of their own. It was widely reported that around 1860, the
Seminoie tribe owned 1,000 slaves and the Cherokees and Chickasaws owned about 3,000 each.
But the treatment of the slaves by the Indians seems to have been radically different from that of
the White slave owners. The Native Americans freely intermarried with their slaves and required
only the annual payment of a portion of their crops (see Editors of Ebony, 1971, p. 106).
8. In 1926, in a study conducted by Melville Hershkovitz, of 1,551 Blacks, more than one
third were found to have Indian ancestry. Many famous Blacks from the Revolutionary War
period, such as Crispus Attucks, Captain Paul Caffee, and Salem Poor, had their Indian ances-
try documented, according to the Editors of Ebony (1971, p. 110).
9. Horatio Strother (1962), in The Underground Railroad in Connecticut, describes the
term Underground Railroad's origin in the following way:

A slave named Tice Davids escaped from his owner in Ripley, Ohio, and immediately
disappeared. The master searched the vicinity as thoroughly as he could but found no
trace of his runaway bondsman. At length he concluded ruefully, "He must have got-
ten away by an underground road." From "road" to "railroad" was a simple transition.
. . . The terminology of railroading afforded easy names with which to mask a range
of activities that lay outside the law. So the Underground Railroad - more the "name
of a mode of operation than the name of a corporation" - had its "conductors" and
"passengers" . . . "stations" and "stationkeepers." (p. 5)

10. For example, after the Union captured the city of New Orleans, free and runaway
slaves migrated into the city in such huge numbers that the Union generals did not know what
to do. President Lincoln ordered the generals to house and feed them and to employ those who
were available and to pay them accordingly. These homeless people who could work would be
paid $10 a month for their labor in managing supplies or for their work on railroads; their labor

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 Johnson / African American Homelessness 603

freed up more Union troops to participate in combat. Other organizations were set up to run
similar enterprises within the federal government to try to employ the quasifree Blacks and aid
the Union cause.
1 1 . In the beginning of Reconstruction, Congress created the Freedmen's Bureau to help
the millions of emancipated slaves. The effort was initiated after Congress saw the partial suc-
cess the Union army had in building work camps of freed Blacks. President Lincoln had been
responsible for administering land to freed Blacks by ordering that, in the tax sales of land for-
merly held by Southern Whites, land should be offered at affordable prices and in small quan-
tities to Blacks.
12. For example, in the tax sales of March 1863, Blacks bought only 6 Sea Islands planta-
tions, but Northern investors bought 41. In the South Carolina sales of 1864, White men
bought virtually everything. Linda Slaughter (1969), in The Freedmen of the South, provides
an excellent detailed description and summary of these kinds of purchases.
13. Philip Durham and Everett Jones (1965), in their book, The Negro Cowboys, describe
one treatment used for snakebite; it was "[gashing] around the fang marks . . . [pouring] [gun]
powder over the wound . . . and [lighting] it with a match" (p. 49).
14. There were three major reasons for the large number of male laborers who were on the
road tramping. First, they were traveling west because there was an abundance of male labor
in eastern American cities because of the male-dominated immigration from Europe. Second,
there were wide-ranging job opportunities that were created with the rapid development of the
trans-Mississippi west that lured the tramps to travel westward. And third, there was extensive
job turnover and job impermanence for unskilled and marginal workers at the time, and so the
general lack of job security encouraged tramping.
15. Skid row refers to a section of a city where hobos and bums congregate and where busi-
nesses cater to the needs of the poor and marginalized. The area usually has cheap hotels and
flop houses, places to find employment, and cheap restaurants and taverns. The term origi-
nated in an area in Seattle, Washington, bordering the downhill slopes, where logs were regu-
larly "skidded down the hill" on the way to being processed. By the 20th century, all large
cities had skid rows.
16. According to census data, in 1930 in Philadelphia, Blacks were 1 1.0% of the popula-
tion; in Chicago, Blacks were 6.9% of the population; in Buffalo, Blacks were 2.0% of the
population; and in New York City, they composed 4.7%.
17. Leslie Fishel, describing Jacksonville Florida during the Depression, is quoted in Eric
Foner's (1970) essay, "Black Reconstruction" in America's Black Past. Fishel said,

Negro families on relief outnumbered white families three to one, but the money was
divided according to proportions of the total city population. Thus, 15,000 Negro
families received 45 percent of the funds and 5,000 white families got 55 percent.
Along the Mississippi River, from Natchez to New Orleans, Negroes were passed over
for skilled jobs and frequently received less than the stipulated minimum wage
state of Georgia squeezed out of the FERA administrator the right to fix hourly wages
for Negroes below thirty cents an hour. (p. 395)

18. The National Recovery Act (NRA), the agency responsible for setting industrial codes,
deferred to the wage and employment considerations of local areas, and the NRA exempted
from their largess and jurisdiction agricultural laborers, domestic servants, service trades, and
most unskilled workers.
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) also discriminated in hiring and housing. Skilled
jobs were offered to Whites first, and TVA labor crews were generally segregated, according
to P. Foner in his 1978 "Essays in Afro-American History" (p. 396).

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604 Journal of Black Studies

19. In 1990, among arrested men in seven cities with populations greater than 1 million
(Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, San Diego, Detroit, and Dallas), 49% tested
positive for cocaine; "Among men arrested during 1990 in Manhattan . . . 65% tested positive
for cocaine," according to Christopher Jencks (1994, p. 43) in his book, The Homeless. In
1991, New York City tested the urine from a large sample of homeless men who resided in
general purpose homeless shelters. Of this large sample, 66%, according to Jencks, tested pos-
itive for cocaine. Shaw, Hser, Anglin, and Boyle (1999) collected emergency room hospital
data that also pointed to widespread use. They reported in American Journal of Drug and
Alcohol Abuse that in just the second quarter of 1991, emergency room data, based on a
weighted probability sample, reported more than 30,000 cocaine cases.

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Roberta Ann Johnson is professor of politics at the University of San Francisco. She was the
recipient of the USF College Service Award in 2003, the Distinguished Research Award in
2006, and the Sarlo Prize for Excellence in Teaching in 2007. She is the author of two dozen
journal articles and book chapters on American society and politics and is also author of three
books, The Struggle Against Corruption: A Comparative Study, Whistleblowing: When It
Works - And Why, and Puerto Rico: Commonwealth or Colony?

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