Errant Modernism: The Ethos of Photography in Mexico and Brazil (review)
Shell-Weiss also provides important insights about race relations and civil rights issues. In most ways, Miami was a deep South city until die 1950s, when a heavy migration of Jews and others from northern cities began to alter the city's political culture. Thus, race relations remained difficult through die first half of the twentieth century. Nevertheless, black professionals founded civil rights organizations that challenged segregation, organized voter registration drives, filed law suits, fought for housing reform, and eventually engaged in nonviolent direct action protests, such as lunchcounter sit-ins. Fair employment was always an issue, especially after the early Cuban migrants provided new competition in the low-wage job market. Miami blacks also protested the disparity in American immigration policy that offered favored treatment to Cuban exiles but refused admission to Haitian "boat people" who began arriving on south Florida beaches in the 1970s. Once again, the author demonstrates how African Americans and black immigrants built community and neighborhood, demanded civil rights, and shaped their own experience.