In response to the riots of the mid-60s Walter Thabit was hired to work with the community of East New York to develop a plan for low- and moderate-income public housing. In the years that followed he experienced first-hand the forces that had engineered East New Yorks dramatic decline and that continued to work against its successful revitalization. How East New York Became a Ghetto describes the shift of East New York from a working-class immigrant neighborhood to a largely black and Puerto Rican neighborhood and shows how the resulting racially biased policies caused the deterioration of this once flourishing area. A clear-sighted unflinching look at one ghetto community How East New York Became a Ghetto provides insights and observations on the histories and fates of ghettos throughout the United States.
