November 1987

Tawana Brawley, a 15-year-old Black girl from Wappingers Falls, New York, is found in a garbage bag, her body smeared with feces and racial slurs. She claims six white men, including law enforcement officers, raped her. Al Sharpton, Alton Maddox, and C. Vernon Mason take up her case. A grand jury concludes in October 1988 that the attack was fabricated, but the case inflames debates about race and the justice system.

University of Chicago sociologist William Julius Wilson publishes The Truly Disadvantaged, arguing that deindustrialization and middle-class Black flight have created a concentrated, isolated urban underclass. The book challenges both conservative and liberal orthodoxies and shapes policy debates for a decade. Wilson documents how structural economic changes, not culture alone, produce concentrated Black poverty.

University of Chicago sociologist William Julius Wilson publishes The Truly Disadvantaged, arguing deindustrialization and middle-class Black flight have created a concentrated urban underclass. The book challenges both conservative and liberal orthodoxies and documents how structural economic changes, not culture alone, produce concentrated Black poverty.