系列：美国城市历史研究
在2008年总统竞选期间，“社区组织者”一词被反复使用，用来形容巴拉克·奥巴马是一位经验不足、不适合担任总统的政客。言下之意是，社区组织者的工作不是一项严肃的工作，而且它肯定不在总统简历所需的证书清单上。事实上，几十年来，社区组织者在美国城市的政治生活中发挥了关键作用，也许从来没有像20世纪70年代芝加哥那样，非裔美国人在那里组织起来反对种族隔离、歧视和缺乏平等的上学、住房和工作机会，为进一步赋权奠定了基础。
在《赋予黑人权力的坩埚》中，杰弗里·赫尔格森（Jeffrey Helgeson）讲述了20世纪30年代以来非裔美国人政治权力和行动主义的崛起，揭示了它是如何通过社区建设实现的。他的书讲述了一些家庭主妇的故事，她们组织邻居，建立商人，利用与联邦官员的联系在歧视性极强的就业部门创造机会，以及社会工作者、人事经理和记者在白领劳动力中开辟职位。仔细观察芝加哥社区层面的黑人自由主义政治，赫尔格森解释了芝加哥黑人是如何建立网络的，最终将推翻这座城市看似不可战胜的政治机器。
Crucibles of Black Empowerment: Chicago’s Neighborhood Politics from the New Deal to Harold Washington
Series: Historical Studies of Urban America
The term “community organizer” was deployed repeatedly against Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign as a way to paint him as an inexperienced politician unfit for the presidency. The implication was that the job of a community organizer wasn’t a serious one, and that it certainly wasn’t on the list of credentials needed for a presidential résumé. In reality, community organizers have played key roles in the political lives of American cities for decades, perhaps never more so than during the 1970s in Chicago, where African Americans laid the groundwork for further empowerment as they organized against segregation, discrimination, and lack of equal access to schools, housing, and jobs.
In Crucibles of Black Empowerment, Jeffrey Helgeson recounts the rise of African American political power and activism from the 1930s onward, revealing how it was achieved through community building. His book tells stories of the housewives who organized their neighbors, building tradesmen who used connections with federal officials to create opportunities in a deeply discriminatory employment sector, and the social workers, personnel managers, and journalists who carved out positions in the white-collar workforce. Looking closely at black liberal politics at the neighborhood level in Chicago, Helgeson explains how black Chicagoans built the networks that eventually would overthrow the city’s seemingly invincible political machine.
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