Tally's Corner: A Study of Negro Streetcorner Men

by Elliot Liebow, Hylan Lewis (foreword)

Revision of the author's thesis, Catholic University of America.
Sociological observations on the way of life of black men encountered by the author in a blighted section of Washington, D.C. during the early 1960's.
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Men and jobs
Fathers without children
Husbands and wives
Lovers and exploiters
Friends and networks
Conclusion
Appendix
Reference

Genres: Sociology, Nonfiction, Race, Anthropology, History, African American, Ethnography

280 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1967

About the author

Elliot Liebow was an American urban anthropologist and ethnographer. His works include Tally's Corner and Tell Them Who I Am, both being micro-sociological writings shaped as participant observer studies of people in poor areas.

Dr. Liebow, born in Washington, dropped out of high school to join the Marine Corps in 1942 and saw action in the South Pacific during World War II, when he earned his high school diploma through correspondence courses. He received a bachelor's degree in English literature from George Washington University in 1949 and pursued graduate studies in ancient history at the University of Maryland before turning to anthropology.

In 1984, after being told he had less than a year to live, Dr. Liebow left his post with the National Institute of Mental Health and began volunteering at a soup kitchen and a homeless shelter for women. He wrote that once he realized he was not about to die immediately, he decided to do what he did best as a field anthropologist: he began taking notes. The result was "Tell Them Who I Am."

Tally's Corner was his PhD dissertation for Catholic University of America.

For many years, Dr. Liebow was chief of the Center for the Study of Work and Mental Health of the National Institute of Mental Health. Under his leadership, the center, part of the Department of Health and Human Services, financed research into issues like the democratization of the workplace, the quality of work life, women on welfare and the relationship of work to mental health. Since 1990, he held the Patrick Cardinal O'Boyle Professorship at the National Catholic School for Social Service of the Catholic University of America in Washington.

Reviews

[Jon Nakapalau · Rating 5 out of 5]

African American ('street-corner') men congregate at Tally's corner and try to eke out a living after being ignored and forgotten by society. Their stories of struggle and survival offer a rare glimpse into the very raw dynamics of a group that exists outside the norms/values of the dominant social structure.

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the early 1960s, a white Jewish guy went and hung out on a corner in DC with a bunch of guys the opposite color. Liebow's goal was to bring to the fore an honest appraisal of what most white folks wouldn't dare countenance: the day-to-day life of poor black people. He ended up hanging with the corner peeps for months, becoming friends with them and gradually becoming one of them, despite his post-anthropological misgivings. A textbook example of how pretty much all humanity is the same so why can't we all get along? Liebow zeroed in on family life (the original point of the work) and these guys' economic situation and that's kind of the meat of the work, but the real core is the humanity brought to your table by a dude who simply wasn't afraid to go hang tough on the corner. Simon & Burns' precursor by some decades.

[Noelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found the connection between perceived failure and their employment situation to be the most engaging, as it allows deep connections to the capitalist structure itself. Liebow noted the close proximity of this streetcorner to prominent buildings like the White House and Smithsonian Institution. This highlights a juxtaposition of the wealth and class of those associated with these spaces. While the streetcorner men are physically near some of the most powerful people (or more specifically, white men) in the United States, they lack such economic and social power. The advertising signs that surround the carry-out shop represent a consumerist culture to which they do not belong. Liebow explains these men lack want -- want of a higher standard of living, want of education, and want of a better life -- which is the primary force that drives consumerism.

Not only are they restricted from a consumerist culture, but they are victims of a capitalist system. Liebow's findings strongly supported Karl Marx's theory of alienation of the worker. Marx outlined four modes of alienation, each of which is illustrated in Liebow's text. Alienation of the worker from the product is enacted by those in power, who do not seek input from the workers. The streetcorner men have no input on the product itself, nor do they benefit from the reification of their labor beyond the low wages they receive. Additionally, these men are not engaged in their work nor challenged by it, showing their alienation from the act of production. Labor is interchangeable from one worker to another; the man in the pickup truck demonstrated this point in his indiscriminant recruitment for daily jobs, where skills and previous experience are irrelevant.

The alienation of the workers from their own humanity was most prominent within the text, as many of them felt failure in their roles as providers and were gravely disappointed by "the humiliation of it all." The streetcorner men also are alienated from "the capitalist," shown by their willingness to steal from their employers to supplement their wages. The bosses of their various jobs -- those who own the means of production -- purposely set low wages to balance the effects of worker theft. Even the workers who did steal to supplement their income were unable to financially support themselves and their families, should they have one. Their labor was undervalued, which thereby undermined their measure as men.

Surprisingly, this text lacked a discussion of race as it related to social class. As Liebow shied away from claiming any sort of generalizability beyond his sample, it was unsurprising that he did not compare the streetcorner men to the situations of poor white men. However, his observations could have addressed the intersections of race and class inequality had the streetcorner men discussed their experiences with racial discrimination. This social alienation from society contributes to their alienation as workers. Perhaps the imagery of the American dream and upward mobility was more believable for white workers than for people of color, as there was no paucity of white men in powerful positions. The streetcorner men lacked public examples of black men who were in positions of power at all, let alone having examples of those who transitioned from a lower class status. Especially considering the prominence of the civil rights movement during the time Liebow's research was conducted, the streetcorner men's perceptions of race and its connection to their socioeconomic status would have added depth to an otherwise thorough case study.

[Ioana · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a 'classic' sociological text that began as a dissertation, and it is truly insightful in illuminating the complexities within which urban "street corner men" are enmeshed. However, I question some of the findings as serving to reinforce stereotypes: that black men are absent fathers, that they do not have (for the most part) positive relationships with women, and so on.

[Sheri · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is yet another of the books that are on my shelf and that I should have already read. So...housekeeping reading here we go. :)

I knew the outlines of Liebow's work and some of his conclusions already. What I didn't realize was just how reminscent it would be of Cornel West's arguments on nihilism and the inner city (from the 90s). Liebow's book is very read-able and entertaining; he provides a sympathetic viewpoint and makes many points with which I agree. However, I found the entire thing to be incredibly depressing: once again, evidence that the American-machine does not want to enact real change, Liebow is making points and arguments in 1962 that hold true yet today and about which the majority has done essentially nothing in the past 51 (yikes!) years.

Essentially we need better paying jobs (jobs at which people can support themselves) at the low end of the spectrum. And, in fact, I think now that the 1960s ands 70s was a heyday of such jobs (factories!) that all disappeared with globalization in the 80s. Our continual search for more cheap goods and the service economy and (now, recently) development of AI has only futher reduced opportunity for those without specialized education. Liebow sums up nicely with this: "The way in which the man makes a living and the kind of living he makes have important consequences for how the man sees himself and is seen by others; and these, in turn, importantly shape his relationships with family members, lovers, friends and neighbors."

His concluding prescription is still at the top of the list today: have higher expectations, better education, and jobs that can support people. Such a shame that we are still saying these things and doing essentially nothing about them.

That said, I am just going to end with my favorite quotes (yeah, there are a lot):
"The present study is an attempt to meet the need for recording and interpesting lower-class life of ordinary people, on their grounds and on their terms."
"Behind the man's refusal to take a job or his decision to quit one is not a simple impulse or value choice but a complex combination of assessments of objective reality on the one hand, and values, attitudes and beliefs drawn from difference levels of his experience on the other."
"He comes to the job flat and stale, wearied by the sameness of it all, convinced of his own incompetence, terrified of responsibilty--of being tested still again and found wanting."
"Thus, the man's low self-esteem generates a fear of being tested and prevents him from accepting a job with responsibilities or, once on a job, from staying with it if responsibilities are thrust on him, even if the wages are commensurately higher."
"Neither hard work nor perseverance can conceivably carry the janitor to a sit-down job in the office building he cleans up."
"Living on the edge of both economic and psychological subsistence, the streetcorner man is obliged to expend all his resources on maintaining himself from moment to moment...He does so precisely because he is aware of the future and the hopelessness of it all."
"It is as if living with your own children is to live with your failure, but to live with another man's children is, so far as children are concerned, to be in a fail-proof situation: you can win a little or a lot but, however small your effort or weak your performance, you can almost never lose."
"Men may want 'to jump up and get married,' 'to be a man or something', but knowing, or strongly suspecting, that marriage is a poor risk, they hedge against probably failure by caouflaging tgheir privated readiness to marry with the public fiction of coercion."
"They trace their failures as husbands directly to their weaknesses as men, to their manly flaws (which are not seen as flaws, but as evidence of manliness)."
"Thus, marriage is an occasion of failure. To stay married is to live with your failure, to be confronted by it day in and day out. It is to live in a world whose standards of manliness are forever beyond one's reach, where one is continuously tested and challenged and continually found wanting. In self-defense, the husband retreats to the streetcorner. Here, where the measure of man is considerably smaller, and where weaknesses are somehow turned upside down and almost magically transformed into strenths, he can be, once again, a man among men."
"in a world where sexual conquest is one of the few ways in which one can prove one's masculinity, the man who does not make capital of his relatinship with a woman is that much less a man."
"It is as if frienship is an artifact of desire, a wish relationship, a private agreement between two people to act "as if", rather than a real relationship between persons."
"Armed with models who have failed, convinced of his own worthlessness, illiterate and unskilled, he enters marriage and the job market with the small of failure all around him....Increasingly he turns to the streecorner where a shadow system of values consturced out of public fictions serves to accommodate just such men as he, permitting them to be men once again provided they do not look too closely at one another's credentials."
"His behavior appears not so much as a away of realizing the distinctive goals and values of his own subculture, or of conforming to its models, but rather as his way of trying to achieve many of the goals and values of the larger society, of failing to do this, and of concealing his failure from others and from himself as best he can."
"If there is to be a change in this way of life, this central fact must be changed; the Negro man, along with everyone else, must be given the skills to ear na living and an opportunity to put these skills to work."
"Children and young people must have good schools and good teachers who can give them the skills and the training to compete for jobs and careers, and they must have teachers who believe inthem and help them believe in themselves. Jobs that pay enough to support a family must be opened up to the adult generation s othat they can support their families, so tghat the young people can see the changed reality, so that young and old can experience it and gain a vested interest in the world they live in."

[Lindsay Luke · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 1962-3, the author was hired to work on a study about "Child Rearing Practices Among Low Income Families" in DC. He used the information he gathered for his doctoral thesis that became this book. He hung out on a corner in DC, at 11th & M NW as it turns out, with "Negro corner men" at a carry-out place. Although he was white and Jewish, he had grown up in a mostly black neighborhood in DC and was able to have comfortable relationships with the men he was studying. His findings were ground-breaking at the time, but seem dated and/or obvious now. The language of the 60s ("Negro" and such) also sticks out. I've read Black Like Me and seen Watermelon Man, so it wasn't really that shocking. The book still has value, both in the documenting of the lives of the corner men, and in the documenting of the efforts to understand and aid them 50 years ago. He documents their relationships with work, women, children, and each other in - mostly - their own words. He's sympathetic maybe even to a fault, as some of them do some pretty bad things.
I've lived here since 1971, and I had never heard of the book until recently. In addition to the obvious sociology/anthropology of it, I really like that it's written about and by ordinary people from DC. There are so many people here who are not politicians, lawyers, and lobbyists, but people who don't live here aren't really aware of that. Up through the 70s and early 80s, the corner was largely the same, but there's little left of it now. The children of these men would be my age now. It would be interesting to know what happened to them.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

(I read the 1967 edition and have not seen the 2003
version with the new introduction.)
This book is way,way more readable than you'd expect from
a government-sponsored research project on "Child-Rearing
Practices Among Low Income Families in the District of
Columbia." The author, though white, grew up in D.C. living
above the grocery store his father ran in a predominantly
black neighborhood. This book reports what he learned in
1962-63 while hanging out with the men on a certain D.C.
corner, and while spending time elsewhere with the men he
got to know there. You learn what he saw and heard, and
what he thought and felt about all that. His insights seem
equally valid and important now.

[Pieta · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you're only going to read one book on urban poverty and the experiences of poor African-Americans, read this one. Everything is here in a text that is academic and enlightening. One of the best pieces of qualitative research I've read.

[Paul Jellinek · Rating 5 out of 5]

A surprisingly insightful and well-written book about urban street life that I wish I'd read years ago.

[Mia Foley · Rating 5 out of 5]

an ethnographic study of street corner culture, and the institutional and psychosocial factors influencing poverty among black men in the DC area in the 1960s.

[Nicole Jaubert-lebamoff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating study. I wasn't aware it was republished in 2003.

[Khristopher J. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had to read this book for my ethnography class and it was serviceable. It had its great narrative moments. Liebow's digressions kind of put you to sleep, but the topic itself is fascinating. I don't wanna give too much away, but its important to note that Liebow was a white Jewish man (from D.C.) studying these black men. I wrote a paper on this book - about how I would have restructured the book given the information. If you really want to dig into the information, try to keep a running log on each of the characters because Liebow throws too many at you at once. This book was Elliot Liebow's most popular piece because it was suppose to be an anthropological report. Somewhere along the way, it turned narrative. Decent book. 256 pages. You can read it in half a day.

[Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent insight into street corner life in the 60s. If you read The Corner after this book, you can see how the combination of drugs, discrimination and very little economic opportunity decimated the inner cities of america.

[Steven Peterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A classic ethnography of life in the city for less advantaged people. Liebow's observations of challenges facing the less advantaged is, by now, somewhat dated. But the lessons are still well worth attending to.

[Pat · Rating 4 out of 5]

I fear not much has changed.

[Lisa · Rating 1 out of 5]

Whether it intended to or not, this book is both a study of poor black men and a study of misogyny in the black community (and in general). This review is for the 1967 edition, perhaps this is addressed in the newer one. The misogyny is excused or celebrated to such a degree that this can only be a valuable work in a historic context.

Three out of five chapters are devoted to the exploitation of black women by black men and the neglect of children by their fathers (Fathers Without Children, Husband's and Wives, Lovers And Exploiters). The quotes in my review are mostly from the first two chapters, I was fed up by the third.

Repeated throughout the book is that men NEED sex and WANT children but do not want the RESPONSIBILITIES that come with either. Women's "market value" meanwhile decreases once she begins to have children, but increases when she can support the man who can't support himself. A network of women - wives, mistresses, sisters, friends, mother's, grandmother's - financially, domestically, and sexually carry these men.

They not only lie to women, they also purposefully weaponize getting them pregnant so they become economically dependent and can't resist the man's infidelity or refusal to work (the author both acknowledges that fathers have no interest in caring for their children while also wondering why these beaten tired women can't abandon them to work instead of the man). When they cheat and impregnate another victim, then "dip out" on their first wife or girlfriend, they already know the cycle they're entering into. They're abusive predators. The author in his conclusion says women's "expectations" enlarges the man's failing to meet her demands. So why not couple with the women who readily offer their bodies and money? He cares about their welfare too much, which reveals that he's not really an exploiter at all. Yes, you read that right, refusing to partner with consenting women and instead choosing to tear down and oppress women who want more out of life is actually non-exploitative.

The books stated conclusion: these men need access to more and better employment, but that will not be enough - we also need earlier intervention by providing a good education. In the introduction to the book, the author talks about how much focus has been put on the children and women of poor black communities, and this study is supposed to be some sort of alternative. It does not circle back to that point, but the author spent a lot of time in pool halls and bars getting to it.

The quieter conclusion: "The moral initiative has long passed over to negroes...to promote their own self interests".

The silent part, just for the ladies: Women can't turn a scrub into a husband. Don't mess with men who don't have jobs, don't mess with addicts, and don't mess with men who don't value you or themselves. If you want a better life, "promote your own self interests". Don't forget it.

Choice quotes:

"Fathers who live with their children seem to take no pleasure in their children and give them little of their time and attention."

"The more demonstrative and accepting he is of his children, the greater his public and private commitment to the duties and responsibilities of fatherhood; and the greater his commitment, the greater and sharper his failure as a provider and head of the family. To soften this failure and to lessen the damage to his public and self-esteem, he pushes the children away from him, saying, effect, "I'm not even trying to be your father so now I can't be blamed for failing to accomplish what I'm not trying to do".... Now that he is relatively free of the obligations of fatherhood, he can, in his intermittent contacts with his children, by giving the money for their support and by being solicitous and affectionate with them, enjoy a modest success as father and precisely those same areas in which he is an established failure".

..."Street corner men do want children quite apart from the generalized desire to have a family and be the head of it. A man who has no children may want a child to confirm his masculinity; another may want his girl or wife to conceive in order to reduce the chances of her cheating or cutting out; and still another man may want a particular woman to have his baby because this may guarantee A continuing relationship with this woman".

Tonk and Pearl are married, Tonk has a 7 year old daughter visiting from a previous relationship and Pearl works nights. Pearl encouraged the idea of the daughter living with them full-time, which Tonk refused to do because he complained that he would have to take care of his own child while Pearl worked, and this would compromise his freedom. "Tonk went for a ride with two women, taking his daughter with him. The next day, serious trouble arose when the little girl pointed at one of the women and told Pearl, "she's the one who was in my daddy's arms"

"Women are painfully aware that men see children as liabilities and that a woman who has children may find it difficult to establish a satisfactory relationship with a man. Richard and Shirley are having a fight and Richard has told Shirley she is free to take the children and leave. Surely is crying hard: where can I go? To my mother's grave? To the DC morgue where they cremated my sister last month? You know I'm all alone, so where can I go? Nobody wants a woman with three babies."

"Women are especially resentful of men's instrumental use of children, their use of children as tools for punishment or control in the man woman relationship. One woman dreads a fight with her husband because the children will suffer for it. She knows and he knows that he can get her by slapping the children around. Another woman, separated from her husband, gets only occasional financial support from him but she is afraid to take him to court for fear of that, in order to get back at her, he would go to jail rather than send her money for the children.... Sometimes, during the course of a fight, LeRoy denies that Donald is his son and, secure in the knowledge that she has no place to go, he throws Charlene and the child, together with their belongings, out of the apartment. When the initiative lies with Charlene and she, in turn, threatens to leave him, Leroy forces her to remain by refusing to let her take the child"

Sea Cat (who doesn't always use condoms, obviously) dates a widow who gives him a car (which he crashes), an apartment, and who he "really loves" (who he cheats on). When she finally dumps him he's a dejected mess, begs for a second chance, and when she agrees to meet him he assaults her for reasons he can't explain. Liebow comes to the disgusting conclusion that "He had been as much the lover as the user, maybe more". Screw this garbage - he used her and got angry she stopped him - abuse isn't love. For an author progressive enough to suggest universal basic income in the 1960's you'd think he could have made the leap to being against domestic violence; this is how ingrained hatred of women is.

Author Liebow finds it "peculiar" that there is such a focus on a man's financial contribution to the family he committed to and created, and thinks black women should take over this alongside the house work and childcare, or the government should do it, because it's PECULIAR to expect men to: "the foregoing quotations point clearly to the importance of money in the wifes expectations. To pay the rent, by the groceries, and provide for the other necessary goods and services is the sine qua non of a good husband. There are, of course, several possible alternatives sources of financial support - the wife herself, friends or relatives, or public or private agencies - but it remains peculiarly the (good) husband's responsibility, not anyone else's."

Meanwhile, the women are able to articulate very clearly what it is they want (it's LOVE, what the author ends his Conclusion by naming as the thing that should shape our responses - I guess that just doesn't mean our responses to black women): "although providing such support would be, so far as the husband is concerned, necessary and sufficient, the wife, who seldom gets even this much, wants more, much more. She wants him to be a man in her terms, a husband and father according to her lights. It is not enough that he simply give money for her and the children support, then step away until the next time he shares his payday with them. she wants him to join them as a full-time member of the family, to participate in their affairs, to take an active interest in her and the children, and their activities, and their development is individuals. She wants his ultimate loyalty to be to her and the children, and she wants to loyalty to be public knowledge. She wants the family to present a united front to the outside world".

That is what the black women in the periphery of this study want. She, also a victim of systemic racism and poverty. She, denied  the vote, denied property, denied a checking account, all longer than her male counterpart. And still she has this vision of unity and love, a pathway to bettering herself and the lives of her children. By simply being kind to the people she shares her world with.

The author ends his conclusion with this: "We must love one another or die. Perhaps this is too much to ask of ourselves and others". Perhaps the women who keep dying at the hands of the men in their lives would agree

[Frank Stein · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's so much in here that's insightful and honest and so much that seems flippant or irrelevant.

This is a classic work of anthropological participant-observer reporting, coming out of Eliot Liebow's graduate Ph.D., for which he spent over a year hanging out with a group of poor black men on a street corner in Washington D.C. (only recently revealed to be 11th and P streets, NW). Researched before the famous 1965 Moynihan Report on the black family but published after it, this book remained the last word on the soon untouchable topic for a long-time, and, despite Moynihan's enthusiastic praise for the book, was often read as a response to it.

While Moynihan and others had investigated and critiqued the "culture" of poor blacks, Liebow aimed to show that their supposed culture was the product of an economic system that denied them basic sustenance. The men in Liebow's telling don't avoid work because of a particular culture, but because experience has taught them it is always fickle and unavailing. They don't avoid marriage and parenthood because of an excessive "present-time" orientation, but because their failure to make a decent living prevented them from being the sort of head-of-household that society expected. Liebow's obvious sympathy for his subjects makes his observations ring true, and gives their stories an immediacy and poignancy they deserve, yet this sympathy can also be distorting. Liebow seems to spend much of his time justifying behavior he knows appears ill-advised, and whether or not these justifications are correct, they seem ultimately irrelevant to his reporting. Ignoring sons and daughters, avoiding work and getting fired to make sure a girlfriend isn't cheating, breaking up friendships over picayune loans or slights, these are perhaps just exaggerated visions of all of our foibles, but Liebow seems overly eager to explain them away. In fact, what appeared then like justification may even now seem like judgment. In his chapter "Fathers without Children," Liebow explains how male-female relationships took precedence over parent-child ones in the world of poor black men, but seems genuinely disturbed that fathers would leave wives and children without cause. His (and his subjects') very real concern with matrimony and the importance of stable marriages, despite the fact that almost none of them stayed stable in the world in which he reports, can appear almost quaint in a day when co-habitation is so common. This book then is still very much in the world of the Moynihan Report, for its author and its subjects.

Yet if one can ignore some of the overly elaborate explanations, and the inevitable sociological argot, this is a quiet, sure, and lovely look at a certain kind of life lived in in a very recent and still recognizable world.

[Harron68 · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just finished an original copy, so can't comment on the horrors in the inner-cities since. Guns, drugs, gangs and more made a bad situation into a deadly and hellish one many folks fled.
i was surprised the dissertation in book form wasn't more comprehensive. The Moynihan Report, funded in part and co-authored by the famous senator was of the same era and did have more to say. Unfortunately its controversies and the horrors of Vietnam in cost of lives and dollars doomed any meaningful attention. "Guns or butter," the slogan went. We chose war.
Since 50 years ago inner-cities have worsened, died as those who could abandoned property fled back south. That left a goldmine as developers began building new gentrified housing for the nouveau-riche and cities welcomed the influx of money and taxes. That, however, doesn't solve the problem.
The changes wrought by time and technology moved up the chain of semi-skilled work causing further unemployment and together with outsourcing and cheap super-cargo shipping costs makes for others in rural parts and the under-educated in similar straits where drugs and chaotic lifestyles now grow, witness the opioid and other drug use outside of cities.
This book, a historical look into what was and was needed in repairs, will remain a prime example of a missed opportunity. Today, with anti-government thinking in the fore, money or any significant effort to change society for the better falls under the conservative banner "self-help."
I give the book 4 stars for teaching me how things were and why it made sense to the people there and then. Oddly, there is no mention of churches in making headway, omission or a non-issue, I don't know.

[Will · Rating 4 out of 5]

Essentially the founding text of urban sociology--yet more than 50 years later, it remains entirely readable, and completely engaging. This book is well worth a read for anyone interested in the social organization of urban poverty. Liebow set the standard for many decades of future research, and many (although not all) of his findings are still true today.

[Sheila]

Just finished reading for a Sociology course. It was written in the 60s, but very relevant today.

[Dylan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting ethnography, I like the analysis Liebow provides on a lot of problems faced, especially the in depth look at father-son relationships

[Louis · Rating 3 out of 5]

“The man on the cast-iron steps strokes one gnarled arthritic hand with the other and says he doesn’t know whether or not he’ll live long enough to be eligible for Social Security. Raymond, who looks as if he could tear out a fire hydrant, coughs up blood if he bends or moves suddenly. The quiet man has a steel hook strapped onto his left elbow. And had we looked into the wine-clouded eyes of the man in the green cap, we would have realized that the man did not even understand he was being offered a day’s work. Still others, like Bumdoodle the numbers man, are working hard at illegal ways of making money, hustlers who are on the street to turn a dollar any way they can. Only a handful remain.
There is a Tonk, who cannot bring himself to take a job away from the corner, because, according to the others, he suspects his wife will be unfaithful if given the opportunity. There is Stanton, who has not reported for work for four days now, not since Bernice disappeared. He bought a brand new knife against her return. She had done this twice before. And finally, there are those like Arthur, able-bodied men who have no visible means of support, legal or illegal, who neither have jobs nor want them.”

“And despite their small numbers, the don’t-work-and-don’t-want-to-work minority is especially significant. These men differ from the others in degree rather than in kind, the principal difference being that they are carrying out the implications of their values and experiences to their logical, inevitable conclusions. In this sense, the others have yet to come to terms with themselves and the world they live in.”

“Behind the man's refusal to take a job or his decision to quit one is not a simple impulse or value choice but a complex combination of assessments of objective reality on the one hand, and values, attitudes and beliefs drawn from different levels of his experience on the other.”

“There are many ways to explain this paradox in which fathers who live with their children appear to be less warm, tender and affectionate in their face-to-face relationships with their children than separated fathers.”

“I’ve been thinking of killing myself. My mother was all I had. I been thinking I’ll go to the pet shop and get a cat.”

3.5, good stuff, a bit dated.

[Bryce Van Vleet · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rating: 3.5
Tally's Corner is a landmark ethnography - and with good reason. I appreciated Liebow's subject, as Black men were (and, arguably, still are) left out of sociological studies. The weaknesses of Liebow's piece are those that we see with any ethnography. Some, myself included, would argue that Liebow's biggest weakness is his perpetuation of stereotypes. While he accomplishes the task of mitigating cultural difference, he confirms many racist notions of Black culture, which was disappointing. I don't think that was Liebow's intent, but it was definitely a result. His book also isn't wildly entertaining. I also would have liked to see a greater emphasis on the individuals mentioned, not just who they were in proportion to others. Nevertheless, Liebow's landmark study is an important one. His conclusions are surprising and his organization is great. This was a great ethnography, but probably isn't as interesting to general audiences as some sociology books are.

[Cardemonde · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent sociology. Tells it from the perspective of the men, while also providing cogent analysis beyond the conscious processes. Should be read by anyone with an interest in the sociology and psychology of poor (or otherwise marginalized) men, as a complement to the more accessible information regarding women and children (as, in fact, was the purpose of the book and the research that led to it; data on women and children in such socioeconomic conditions was always easier to come by, since the women and children were home more often).

[Rae · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's definitely a product of its time. Sociological and anthropological analysis are, in its truest form, a read of the current climate and its timeliness is entirely dependent on the group that they studied's evolution over time. Despite its age, it still offers great insight into the attitudes and lifestyles of black men in urban areas, especially in comparison to modern-day articles and texts about this subject. In all, this book is a great introduction to understanding the effects of longstanding institutional racism on the minds of black men.

[Cristian · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book freshman year of college and to be quite frank, it went over my head and I used the stories to justify my biases about race and class. After a couple of life experiences and becoming radicalized this book provides the insight to what life is like in the lower class and how the system is designed by people in power restricts access to opportunity. It's a bit wordy but you have to keep in mind this was written at a different time.

[Ace McGee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reread of a book that I read at University. (Probably for a class entitled, “ Casualties of American Society”, a favorite course.)

A Cultural Anthropologist doing a study in poor, black Washington DC in 1961, observing men, their lives, and their connections to the community and how they survive, mentally as well as economically, one rung above destitute.

This was probably the profession I should have followed.

[Christiana Sylvaine · Rating 1 out of 5]

I would not have finished this book if I didn't have to read it for Sociology. The amount of run-on sentences was absurd. I would have been happy with the answers to my essay questions, which were luckily spelled out quite nicely. Anyways, I wouldn't recommend this book for anything but educational purposes

[Martha]

own it, from parents' library

[Benjamin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Canonical 1960s ethnography very good