In “Race and Community in Postwar Brooklyn: The Brownsville Neighborhood Council and the Politics of Urban Renewal” by Wendell E. Pritchett takes the reader through the history of Brownsville, Brooklyn.  Originally known as ‘Brooklyn’s Lower East Side,’ Brownsville served as the hope of an ideal integrated neighborhood.  The people of Brownsville, particularly the Brownsville Neighborhood Council hoped that Brownsville would serve as the model community, integrating both black and white families, both middle income and low income families.  

The Brownsville Neighborhood Council believed “that all people deserved a decent home, regardless of color” (449).  Their mission pushed them to consistently push for new housing projects, expecting that the blacks and whites would live together as models for interracial living.  Honestly, it seems as though the BNC had been expecting too much in such a short amount of time.  They wanted to make Brownsville into this utopia of their time.  They seemed too idealistic.  The BNC probably did not take into consideration that as the second and third generation of Jews began to attain higher educations and better jobs that they would want to get out of that neighborhood.  To get out of the slums in which they grew up in.  

Another factor in which the BNC seemed to have forgotten was that racial tensions were extremely high during this time.  During this time period, blacks were still trying to fight for equal rights and evidently, the whites still saw them ‘lesser’ than them.  The BNC seemed to have taken on this impossible task of this truly integrated neighborhood.  Although the BNC had wanted to create this seemingly perfectly integrated neighborhood, it seems as though the government had other plans in mind.  From the reading, it is evident that the only reason the government had provided public housing in Brownsville was to create a place where they could just dump minorities.   Pritchett notes  “Public housing could serve as a savior to both blacks and whites in the area and prevent the expansion of blacks into the surrounding neighborhood” (449).  This makes it seem as though public housing was a solution to hindering the expansion of blacks into other neighborhoods and restricting them to one area.

BNC had devoted its entire mission in creating this perfectly integrated neighborhood.  One aspect in which they had hoped to fulfill this mission was to include black leaders within the BNC leadership.  “The Harlem Ghetto” notes that “they are in an impossible position and that the handful motivated by genuine concern maintain this position with heartbreaking dignity”.  Although the Brownsville activist had “vocally protested racial practices in the South, holding rallies against Jim Crow laws and other discriminatory practices there” (453) and had even held a dinner signing a petition in order to outlaw poll taxes, the activist did not tackle the most important and direct issues of the Blacks.  Instead they seemed to only serve as figureheads.  Yes, the BNC leaders relied on the black leaders for advice and to convey messages to the black population, but they did not seem to work towards a common goal.  Pritchett even notes that they “did not meet frequently to discuss issues of common concern” (455).

The hopes and desires of the BNC to create this integrated neighborhood seems a little naive at this point in history.  Yet, the BNC seemed to have very modern ideas for its time.