Invisible Houston

Houston was Boomtown USA in the 1970s, growing through tremendous immigration of people and through frequent annexation of outlying areas. But in the shadow of the high-rise "petropolis" was another city ignored by and invisible to Houston municipal boosters and the national media. Black Houston, the largest black community in the South, remained largely untouched by the benefits of the boom but bore many of the burdens. Robert D. Bullard systematically explores major demographic, social, economic, and political factors that helped make Houston the "golden buckle" of the Sunbelt. He then chronicles the rise of Houston's black neighborhoods and analyzes the problems that have accrued to the black community over the years, concentrating on the boom era of the 1970s and the dwindling of the economy and of government commitment to affirmative action in the late 1980s. Case studies conducted in Houston's Third Ward--a microcosm of the larger black community--provide data on housing patterns