December 13, 2001 | Read Time: 1 minute
The New Urban Leaders
by Joyce A. Ladner
A new generation of civil-rights leaders is fighting racial discrimination and poverty in American cities through the work of nonprofit community-development organizations, writes Joyce A. Ladner. In The New Urban Leaders, Ms. Ladner, a senior fellow in governmental studies at the Brookings Institution, looks at what makes these leaders so successful.
The first chapter of her book traces the history of the civil-rights movement and of federal programs to help the poor. Following sections highlight the work of three people: Kent Amos, who established the Urban Family Institute, which provides mentors to inner-city children in Washington; Robert Parris Moses, who created the Algebra Project, in Cambridge, Mass., which designs curriculums to teach inner-city students mathematical skills and problem-solving methods; and Eugene Rivers, a co-founder of the Ten-Point Coalition, a group of ministers that works to combat gang violence in Boston.
One chapter describes the qualities that effective urban leaders possess, and includes brief profiles of individuals who have these skills. The author then describes strategies that leaders are using, and identifies ways that veteran leaders can effectively nurture new leaders to take over from them as they retire.
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press, 1775 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036; (202) 797-6258 or (800) 275-1447; fax (202) 797-6004; http://www.brookings.edu; 152 pages; $22.95; I.S.B.N. 0-8157-5108-7.
