Necropolis: The Bronx and the Politics of Abandonment — Study Notes

Necropolis: The Bronx and the Politics of Abandonment

• Opening frame: public face of baseball vs. underlying social decay in the South Bronx during the late 1970s.

• Barry Bonds quote (framing device): "When you come to the ballpark, you're walking into a place that is all deception and lies… There's nothing truthful at the ballpark. Except the game."

• Time and place: second game of the 1977 World Series, Yankees vs Dodgers; East Coast vs West; an arctic wind and ominous moon set a foreboding mood.

• Free agency reshapes the Yankees: $3,000,000 offer for Reggie Jackson marks the biggest prize in MLB history up to that point; symbolism of wealth in a game otherwise rooted in a blues/Negro Leagues lineage.

• Reggie Jackson’s reception in 1977 Yankees:

  • George Steinbrenner’s high-spending strategy; Jackson as centerpiece of a money-driven era.
  • Billy Martin’s resistance: he opposed signing Jackson and refused to attend the press conference; tension between ownership and management.
  • Jackson’s friction with teammates: resentment over salary, perceived flamboyance (Rolls-Royce, blonde girlfriends).
  • Jackson’s arrogance cited as tipping point for team chemistry; teammates’ resentment focused on Jackson’s self-assurance.

• On-field conflict and its personal toll:

  • June game vs Red Sox: Jackson misses flyball; Billy Martin pulls him from the game; heated exchange in dugout; expletives columned between manager and player.
  • Jackson tearfully confronting his treatment: "The Yankees pinstripes are Ruth and Gehrig and DiMaggio and Mantle and I'm a n—ger to them… I don't know how to be subservient."
  • Context: this is framed as a clash between a Black superstar and a traditionally white, championship-obsessed clubhouse.

• Jackie Robinson’s legacy and its political arc:

  • Robinson’s integration as a civil rights touchstone, not just a baseball milestone.
  • The postwar integration push and its political struggle in the 1960s: Robinson advocates for integration within American society, not segregation.
  • 1963 Harlem rally with Malcolm X; Powell’s politics vs. Robinson’s integrationist stance.
  • Robinson’s letter to Powell: insistence on moving into society’s rightful place alongside any other American.
  • Malcolm X’s response: critique of Robinson’s alignment with White Benefactors and the limits of integration.
  • Later, MLK Jr.’s I Have a Dream speech; Watts uprisings; long hot summers; the erosion of faith in both integrationist and nationalist Black movements.

• The paradox of Jackson’s stance in the late 70s:

  • Jackson’s self-perception as a powerful Black man in a era of both civil rights and Black Power.
  • Jackson’s quote: "I'm a big, Black man with an IQ of 160, making $700,000 a year, and they treat me like dirt. They've never had anyone like me on their team before."
  • Four months after these tensions, the World Series stage becomes a site for historical reconciliation and national attention to race in sports.

• World Series evening imagery and public memory:

  • Yankees win Game One; Dodgers’ power display; three Dodgers hit Catfish Hunter’s pitches early; Jackson fails to reach base in the game described.
  • Crowd violence at the stadium: smoke, firecrackers, fans rushing the outfield, fights in stands; environmental weather turning ugly.
  • Outside the stadium, the Bronx’s distortions: smoke from PS 3, a burning public school, and a city under stress. Howard Cosell’s famous "Bronx is burning" line becomes a symbol of the era’s crisis.

• Mass Movements and the Cross-Bronx Expressway:

  • 1953 master plan yields the Cross-Bronx Expressway, a physical and symbolic divider that accelerates displacement.
  • The expressway’s construction devastates 60,000 Bronx residents; modernist engineering as a political tool of displacement.
  • Mos es’s role: a white urban planner whose control of expressways and renewal becomes a blueprint for white exodus and urban decay.
  • The Expressway’s engineering feat: 113 streets/avenues crossed; hundreds of mains; multiple transit lines; seven other expressways/parkways; a monumental project with disastrous social costs.
  • Demolitions and displacements in Manhattan ghettos used as pretext for clearing out African-American, Puerto Rican, and Jewish families.
  • The tower-in-a-park model: Le Corbusier’s Radiant City influence; Bronx River Houses (1,200 units), Millbrook Houses (1,200), Bronxdale Houses (over 1,500), Patterson Houses (over 1,700).
  • The social calculus: high-density housing for the displaced poor, used to justify slum clearance, business redevelopment, and union suppression.
  • White flight: half the White population leaves the South Bronx by the end of the decade; migration to Westchester, Co-op City, and suburbs along highways.
  • Marshall Berman’s line captures the emotional toll of the exodus: "We fight back the tears and step on the gas."

• The rise of urban disorder and youth violence:

  • White and Black/Latino communities confront new urban dynamics: gang formation among Black, Afro-Caribbean, and Latino youths; self-defense and power struggles.
  • The emergence of political groups like the Black Panther Party and Young Lords; their engagement with youth within a context of police and state pressure.
  • The broader decline: from civil rights optimism to a long exhaustion and violent flux; drug trade and arson become systemic features.
  • Official commentary on the displacement logic: a voice stating that the goal was to bypass Manhattan with ugliness as much as possible; public housing and highways were the tactics that destabilized the South Bronx.

• Bad Numbers: economic and demographic collapse in the South Bronx

  • Jobs: 600,000 manufacturing jobs lost; 40% of the sector disappeared.
  • Income: mid-1970s per-capita income fell to 2{,}430, about half of NYC average and 40% of national average.
  • Unemployment: official youth unemployment around 60 ext{%}; some neighborhoods judged as high as 80 ext{%} by youth advocates.
  • The emergence of a salvage economy around arson, neglect, and insurance scams:
  • Slumlords burn vacant buildings to collect insurance; rent-a-thugs hired for arson; banks/insurance profits from the insurance industry’s practices.
  • 1970s media investigations describe a systemic cycle: arson as a means to force property turnover and maximize profits; the claim that the final stage of capitalism in housing is arson.

• The Moynihan moment and the politics of neglect:

  • Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s memo (1970) on fires in the South Bronx and radical politics; the memo’s leakage and its controversial recommendation of ’benign neglect’ to withdraw social services.
  • Nixon administration's reaction: the memo reportedly agreed to, fueling a backlash against social programs in inner cities.
  • The phrase benign neglect becomes a rallying cry to cut social services, with long-term consequences for urban poverty and ethnic tensions.
  • Rand Corporation data and the justification for reducing municipal fire services; 7 fire companies removed post-1968; mid-70s budget crisis leads to thousands more firefighter layoffs.

• The ecologies of fire and abandonment: Deborah and Rodrick Wallace’s contagion theory

  • The South Bronx’s fires described as a contagion, not merely accidents or sporadic arson.
  • By 1977, the borough had lost 43,000 housing units (roughly four blocks per week in terms of vacancy and destruction).
  • 1973–1977: approximately 30,000 fires in the South Bronx alone.
  • 1975: a single hot day with 40 fires in three hours illustrates the scale of urban crisis.

• The 1977 blackout and social breakdown:

  • July 13 blackout: sweeping looting and opportunistic redistribution; 1,000 fires; many neighborhoods affected including Crown Heights, Harlem, East New York, and the South Bronx.
  • Gangs like the Turbans and Reapers lost power as the broader social order dissolved; the blackout catalyzed new urban narratives about violence and opportunity.
  • James TOP’s comment on looting: the event as a self-determined correction to exploitation in the community; a political signal of urban fault lines.

• The Carter visit and the state’s role in legitimizing urban ruin:

  • President Carter visits the South Bronx amid devastation; the security state mobilized, helicopters overhead, a visible demonstration of national concern.
  • The president’s soft-spoken line to the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development about salvaging what areas can be saved reveals federal interpretation of urban decline.

• The Wasteland framing: policy disconnects and the global South

  • The South Bronx is recast as a “Necropolis” or a city of death; a symbol of urban pathology defined more by poverty than geography.
  • The Beame administration faces a crisis in municipal finance and service provision; Moyers’ Fire Next Door documentary contrasts local neglect with federal attention to foreign affairs.
  • The Moyers conclusion questions the global gaze: U.S. leaders attend to crises abroad while failing to address urban crises at home.
  • The South Bronx’s new geography: a global south, connected to the world not by prosperity but by subway lines and neglect; even Mother Teresa visits as a sign of global attention to poverty.

• The revitalization conundrum: policy responses and their ambiguities

  • The city’s plan for revitalization claims non-numeric indicators like fear and security concerns as core issues; the plan frames shrinkage as a rational policy.
  • Edward Logue’s counterpoint: the South Bronx is an enormous success story because 750,000 people left for suburbs in twenty years; his stance reflects the triumphalist logic of urban renewal.
  • George Sternlieb’s counter-vision: the city cannot rely on the South Bronx; a dystopian image of armored car entry into the central city.
  • Roger Starr’s end-game: planned shrinkage—withdraw services (health, fire, police, sanitation, transit) until remaining residents must leave; schools closed, arts programs starved, basic educational needs neglected.

• Moses’s long shadow and the idea of leveling the Bronx

  • Moses’s retirement-era vision (1973): the Bronx slum and others are unreparable; a radical plan to level the areas and move 60,000 residents into cheap high-rises at Ferry Point Park.
  • The envisioned view: high-rise towers with panoramic views across East River; juxtaposition against the brutal proximity of Rikers Island and LaGuardia’s jets—an image of deliberate social segmentation.

• Just a Friendly Game of Baseball: the World Series as a final stage for a larger drama

  • The sixth game of the 1977 World Series: Reggie Jackson hits three home runs; Yankees win 8–4; Jackson’s heroics bring momentary triumph to a city in crisis.
  • The on-field celebration and off-field tensions:
  • Jackson and Billy Martin’s cooperation in victory; champagne celebration; Jackson waves Jackie Robinson’s gold medal and asks reporters what Robinson would think of him.
  • Thurman Munson’s racially charged slur to Jackson: "Hey coon… Nice goin', coon"; Jackson’s response and reconciliation moment: Munson promises to see him next year; Jackson acknowledges the connection.
  • The moment reframes a national narrative about race, sports, and history as a microcosm of broader social tensions.

• Epilogue: cultural resonance and a generation’s claim on history

  • The Kingston, Jamaica reggae group Culture speaks of Babylon’s end and apocalyptic signs; the new generation—educated, empowered, yet precariously positioned—will not settle for old bargains.
  • The final sentiment: a generation given much, denied much, and choosing to dance and resist together in the face of systemic abandonment.

• Key terms and concepts to know

  • Necropolis: a city of death; the Bronx as symbol of urban decay under neglect and political calculation.
  • Cross-Bronx Expressway: the major urban renewal project that displaced thousands; a symbol of modern infrastructure built atop human displacement.
  • Tower-in-a-park: Le Corbusier-inspired high-rise living aimed at solving density but often resulting in isolation and decay.
  • Benign neglect: a policy concept used to justify withdrawal of services from inner cities; linked to long-term urban decline.
  • Planned shrinkage: policy of withdrawing services to force residents to leave; a strategy associated with city officials and Rand data analysis.
  • Arson economy: a systemic practice where fires sustain insurance payouts, credit, and opportunistic looting; described as the final stage of capitalism in housing.
  • The D’Angelo cycle of public housing and highways: a pattern of displacement reinforced by the highways’ routes and the housing projects’ density.
  • The Pusherman: a metaphor from Curtis Mayfield’s song used to describe the drug economy and social decline.
  • The New South Bronx: a reimagined geography where the city’s decline is recoded as a global south rather than a local problem.

• Connections to larger themes and historical context

  • Civil rights to mass urban policy shifts: Robinson’s integration legacy interwoven with Harlem politics, Moynihan’s data-driven neglect justification, Nixon/Beame policy environments.
  • The urban renewal project as a political project: how infrastructure, housing policy, and federal funding choices reshaped neighborhoods, often at the expense of communities of color.
  • The cultural turn: how the conditions of abandonment helped birth hip-hop, street poetry, and reggae as modes of resistance and cultural production.
  • Ethical implications: responsibility of city planners and policymakers to protect vulnerable communities vs. the reality of deferred maintenance, budget cuts, and structural racism.

• Notable numerical references (for quick recall)

  • Yankees’ signing: 3{,}000{,}000 (Reggie Jackson contract)
  • Reggie Jackson’s year of prominence: 1977
  • Jackie Robinson’s era: breaking color line in 1947; Robinson’s retirement and postwar politics.
  • Cross-Bronx Expressway impact: 60{,}000 residents displaced
  • Public housing units (tower-in-a-park): 1{,}200 (Bronx River), 1{,}200 (Millbrook), 1{,}500 (Bronxdale), 1{,}700 (Patterson)
  • Economic decline: 600{,}000 manufacturing jobs lost; per-capita income 2{,}430; unemployment around 60\% (some neighborhoods estimated up to 80\%)
  • Fires: about 30{,}000 fires from 1973–1977; 40 fires in one day (June 1975); 43,000 housing units lost by 1977
  • Population mobility: 750{,}000 people left the South Bronx in twenty years
  • 1977 World Series final: Yankees 8, Dodgers 4

• Summative takeaway: The South Bronx in the 1960s–70s embodies the collapse of a social contract between urban policy and urban residents, where infrastructure, public housing, and austerity budgets intersected with racialized politics to produce a cityscape of abandonment. The World Series and the Reggie Jackson story mirror larger themes of race, economics, and representation in American life, while the policy debates (benign neglect, planned shrinkage, and mass displacement) reveal how power operates through space, numbers, and narrative.

• Guiding questions for exam preparation

  • How did the Cross-Bronx Expressway contribute to the displacement of residents and the decline of the South Bronx?
  • In what ways did Reggie Jackson’s role on the 1977 Yankees illustrate broader tensions around race, class, and the politics of fame?
  • What is the significance of Moynihan’s benign neglect memo in the discourse on urban policy and race relations?
  • How did the 1977 blackout and the fires symbolize the systemic abandonment of inner-city neighborhoods?
  • What do terms like Necropolis, planned shrinkage, and tower-in-a-park reveal about the governance of urban spaces during this era?