Tally's Corner: A Study of Negro Streetcorner Men

(Paperback)

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The first edition of Tally's Corner, a sociological classic, was the first compelling response to the culture of poverty thesis - that the poor are different and, according to conservatives, morally inferior - and alternative explanations that many African Americans are caught in a tangle of pathology owing to the absence of black men in families. Elliot Liebow's new introduction to this long-awaited revised edition bring the book up to date. Visit our website for sample chapters!

Reviews

Tally's Corner is an important book for anyone seeking to understand America. -- Herbert Gans, author of Democracy and the News
Whenever and wherever people come out of the dark to face the shadow of America's befuddled relation to the Black man of the city, Tally's Corner is somewhere on the penumbra of consciousness, serving as a lifeline against the currents of ill-informed racist blather about urban poverty. . . . The story of the Black man of the city is ultimately the story of the modern city itself, and in turn of the postmodern global economy. It is a story that is nowhere near its final chapter. -- Charles Lemert, University Professor of Social Theory, Emeritus, Wesleyan University
The true mark of a classic book is whether it can withstand the test of time. [Liebow's] arguments concerning the work experience and family life of black street-corner men in a Washington, D.C. ghetto still ring true today. . . . In the last three decades, low-skilled African-American males have encountered greater difficulty gaining access to jobs, even menial jobs. -- William Julius Wilson, Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor, Harvard University
It's a remarkable book, an academic work - it grew out of Liebow's doctoral thesis - that isn't dry or boring. It's an in-depth look at a group of men who routinely hung out on a Washington street corner in the early 1960s. These are poor men, flawed men, unemployed and underemployed men. But they are treated with respect. And although Liebow used pseudonyms, giving the men such names as Tally, Sea Cat, Richard and Leroy, they come across as flesh-and-blood individuals. When Tally's Corner was published in 1967, the New York Times called it "a valuable and even surprising triumph." The late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) called it "nothing short of brilliant." * The Washington Post *

Author Bio

Elliot Liebow (1925-1994) served as chief of the Center for the Study of Work and Mental Health of the National Institute of Mental Health. Liebow wrote Tally's Corner as his Ph.D. dissertation at the Catholic University of America. He also published Tell Them Who I Am, a study of homeless women in America, in 1993.