D'Weston Haywood
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781469643397
- eISBN:
- 9781469643410
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469643397.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
This chapter reinterprets the rise of black radicalism as a moment of competing “voices” across competing mass medias amid rapid changes in the black freedom struggle and media landscape of the ...
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This chapter reinterprets the rise of black radicalism as a moment of competing “voices” across competing mass medias amid rapid changes in the black freedom struggle and media landscape of the 1960s. It also reinterprets Malcolm X as a newspaper publisher, a rather underanalyzed side of Malcolm. Black publishers had long considered their papers the “voice” of the race, and Malcolm’s founding of Muhammad Speaks in 1960 to amplify the voice of Elijah Muhammad signified this. Yet, the paper’s founding also marked the beginning of the Nation of Islam’s (NOI) robust media campaign to use various medias—radio, books, and albums of Muhammad’s speeches—to promote Muhammad’s vision for racial advancement over others. His vision promised to redeem black manhood by renewing their lives, a vision displayed through salesmen for Muhammad Speaks. Thus, readers could read both the paper and their bodies. Malcolm, however, made his display through television. But when he began to gain a voice through television that rivaled that of Muhammad’s in print, the NOI’s media campaign turned from promising to renew the lives of black men to promising to take it away. Malcolm became a newspaperman cut short of his full publishing potential.Less
This chapter reinterprets the rise of black radicalism as a moment of competing “voices” across competing mass medias amid rapid changes in the black freedom struggle and media landscape of the 1960s. It also reinterprets Malcolm X as a newspaper publisher, a rather underanalyzed side of Malcolm. Black publishers had long considered their papers the “voice” of the race, and Malcolm’s founding of Muhammad Speaks in 1960 to amplify the voice of Elijah Muhammad signified this. Yet, the paper’s founding also marked the beginning of the Nation of Islam’s (NOI) robust media campaign to use various medias—radio, books, and albums of Muhammad’s speeches—to promote Muhammad’s vision for racial advancement over others. His vision promised to redeem black manhood by renewing their lives, a vision displayed through salesmen for Muhammad Speaks. Thus, readers could read both the paper and their bodies. Malcolm, however, made his display through television. But when he began to gain a voice through television that rivaled that of Muhammad’s in print, the NOI’s media campaign turned from promising to renew the lives of black men to promising to take it away. Malcolm became a newspaperman cut short of his full publishing potential.
Robert Dannin
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195300246
- eISBN:
- 9780199850433
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195300246.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Islam
This book offers an ethnographic study of African-American Muslims. Drawing on hundreds of interviews conducted over a period of several years, the author provides a look inside the little-understood ...
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This book offers an ethnographic study of African-American Muslims. Drawing on hundreds of interviews conducted over a period of several years, the author provides a look inside the little-understood world of black Muslims. He discovers that the well-known and cultlike Nation of Islam represents only a small part of the picture. Many more African Americans are drawn to Islamic orthodoxy, with its strict adherence to the Quran. The author takes us to the First Cleveland Mosque, the oldest continuing Muslim institution in America, on to a permanent Muslim village in Buffalo, and then inside New York’s maximum-security prisons to hear testimony of the powerful attraction of Islam for individuals in desperate situations. He looks at the aftermath of the assassination of Malcolm X, and the ongoing warfare between the Nation of Islam and orthodox Muslims.Less
This book offers an ethnographic study of African-American Muslims. Drawing on hundreds of interviews conducted over a period of several years, the author provides a look inside the little-understood world of black Muslims. He discovers that the well-known and cultlike Nation of Islam represents only a small part of the picture. Many more African Americans are drawn to Islamic orthodoxy, with its strict adherence to the Quran. The author takes us to the First Cleveland Mosque, the oldest continuing Muslim institution in America, on to a permanent Muslim village in Buffalo, and then inside New York’s maximum-security prisons to hear testimony of the powerful attraction of Islam for individuals in desperate situations. He looks at the aftermath of the assassination of Malcolm X, and the ongoing warfare between the Nation of Islam and orthodox Muslims.
Sohail Daulatzai
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816675852
- eISBN:
- 9781452947600
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816675852.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, History of Religion
“The same rebellion, the same impatience, the same anger that exists in the hearts of the dark people in Africa and Asia,” Malcolm X declared in a 1962 speech, “is existing in the hearts and minds of ...
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“The same rebellion, the same impatience, the same anger that exists in the hearts of the dark people in Africa and Asia,” Malcolm X declared in a 1962 speech, “is existing in the hearts and minds of 20 million black people in this country who have been just as thoroughly colonized as the people in Africa and Asia.” Four decades later, the hip-hop artist Talib Kweli gave voice to a similar Pan-African sentiment in the song “K.O.S. (Determination)”: “The African diaspora represents strength in numbers, a giant can’t slumber forever.” Linking discontent and unrest in Harlem and Los Angeles to anticolonial revolution in Algeria, Egypt, and elsewhere, Black leaders in the United States have frequently looked to the anti-imperialist movements and antiracist rhetoric of the Muslim Third World for inspiration. This book maps the rich, shared history between Black Muslims, Black radicals, and the Muslim Third World, showing how Black artists and activists imagined themselves not as national minorities but as part of a global majority, connected to larger communities of resistance. This book traces these interactions and alliances from the Civil Rights movement and the Black Power era to the “War on Terror,” placing them within a broader framework of American imperialism, Black identity, and the global nature of white oppression.Less
“The same rebellion, the same impatience, the same anger that exists in the hearts of the dark people in Africa and Asia,” Malcolm X declared in a 1962 speech, “is existing in the hearts and minds of 20 million black people in this country who have been just as thoroughly colonized as the people in Africa and Asia.” Four decades later, the hip-hop artist Talib Kweli gave voice to a similar Pan-African sentiment in the song “K.O.S. (Determination)”: “The African diaspora represents strength in numbers, a giant can’t slumber forever.” Linking discontent and unrest in Harlem and Los Angeles to anticolonial revolution in Algeria, Egypt, and elsewhere, Black leaders in the United States have frequently looked to the anti-imperialist movements and antiracist rhetoric of the Muslim Third World for inspiration. This book maps the rich, shared history between Black Muslims, Black radicals, and the Muslim Third World, showing how Black artists and activists imagined themselves not as national minorities but as part of a global majority, connected to larger communities of resistance. This book traces these interactions and alliances from the Civil Rights movement and the Black Power era to the “War on Terror,” placing them within a broader framework of American imperialism, Black identity, and the global nature of white oppression.
Sohail Daulatzai
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816675852
- eISBN:
- 9781452947600
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816675852.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, History of Religion
This chapter investigates how, in the post-9/11 period, the U.S. security state has collapsed the figures of Black criminal and Muslim terrorist into the term “Black Muslim”. By analyzing and ...
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This chapter investigates how, in the post-9/11 period, the U.S. security state has collapsed the figures of Black criminal and Muslim terrorist into the term “Black Muslim”. By analyzing and combining the rhetoric and logic of the “War on Crime” and the “War on Terror”, this chapter explores the collapse of the domestic and foreign realms of U.S. power and views the prison as a site of violent containment for the Muslim International, revealing the intimacies between domestic U.S. prison regimes and the emergence of imperial imprisonment in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo, and other so-called Black sites. It also discusses how Blackness, Islam, and the Muslim Third World being front and center in the current political and popular debate within the United States of America, the U.S. continues to silence and resist the history of Black Islam and those who radically resist.Less
This chapter investigates how, in the post-9/11 period, the U.S. security state has collapsed the figures of Black criminal and Muslim terrorist into the term “Black Muslim”. By analyzing and combining the rhetoric and logic of the “War on Crime” and the “War on Terror”, this chapter explores the collapse of the domestic and foreign realms of U.S. power and views the prison as a site of violent containment for the Muslim International, revealing the intimacies between domestic U.S. prison regimes and the emergence of imperial imprisonment in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo, and other so-called Black sites. It also discusses how Blackness, Islam, and the Muslim Third World being front and center in the current political and popular debate within the United States of America, the U.S. continues to silence and resist the history of Black Islam and those who radically resist.
Garrett Felber
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- January 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781469653822
- eISBN:
- 9781469653846
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469653822.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
The idea of the “Black Muslims” as a hate group, or an example of the emergent falsehood of reverse racism, was facilitated and propagated by carceral officials. It was pliable enough that law ...
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The idea of the “Black Muslims” as a hate group, or an example of the emergent falsehood of reverse racism, was facilitated and propagated by carceral officials. It was pliable enough that law enforcement could suppress Muslim practice in prisons and police local mosques by claim- ing that the NOI was a subversive political group in the guise of religion while offering civil rights organizations the language to dismiss it within the Black freedom struggle. But this suppression and surveillance often helped grow the organization, and Muslims found creative ways to practice Islam and express Black self-determination and anticolonial solidarity, even in the state’s most repressive spaces.Less
The idea of the “Black Muslims” as a hate group, or an example of the emergent falsehood of reverse racism, was facilitated and propagated by carceral officials. It was pliable enough that law enforcement could suppress Muslim practice in prisons and police local mosques by claim- ing that the NOI was a subversive political group in the guise of religion while offering civil rights organizations the language to dismiss it within the Black freedom struggle. But this suppression and surveillance often helped grow the organization, and Muslims found creative ways to practice Islam and express Black self-determination and anticolonial solidarity, even in the state’s most repressive spaces.
Mark S. Hamm
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814725443
- eISBN:
- 9780814724071
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814725443.003.0002
- Subject:
- Sociology, Law, Crime and Deviance
This chapter traces the emergence and political role of Islam in American prisons, as well as the intersections between race and religion, beginning with Noble Drew Ali's revolutionary Moorish ...
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This chapter traces the emergence and political role of Islam in American prisons, as well as the intersections between race and religion, beginning with Noble Drew Ali's revolutionary Moorish Science doctrine. From thence arose the Nation of Islam, which spread among prison inmates when its proponents were jailed and later grew into a stabilizing force in many prisons. As Muslim identities intensified among black prisoners in the years ahead, the trend spilled over into the massive racial ghettos of Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles, affecting a symbiosis between prison and street culture. Meanwhile a different story was unfolding on the West Coast, one that would ultimately reverse the achievements of Islam behind bars and create a form of prison-based terrorism.Less
This chapter traces the emergence and political role of Islam in American prisons, as well as the intersections between race and religion, beginning with Noble Drew Ali's revolutionary Moorish Science doctrine. From thence arose the Nation of Islam, which spread among prison inmates when its proponents were jailed and later grew into a stabilizing force in many prisons. As Muslim identities intensified among black prisoners in the years ahead, the trend spilled over into the massive racial ghettos of Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles, affecting a symbiosis between prison and street culture. Meanwhile a different story was unfolding on the West Coast, one that would ultimately reverse the achievements of Islam behind bars and create a form of prison-based terrorism.
Veronica L. Womack
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780813039862
- eISBN:
- 9780813043777
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813039862.003.0011
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
Veronica L. Womack argues that white land control, an impoverished working class, and violent race relations resulted in a distinctive form of Black Power in Alabama. African Americans purchased land ...
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Veronica L. Womack argues that white land control, an impoverished working class, and violent race relations resulted in a distinctive form of Black Power in Alabama. African Americans purchased land despite this, but Alabama still had the second lowest rate of black landownership among black farmers in the South in 1900. Most black farmers in the state operated farms on the cash-rent system. Sharecroppers likewise farmed, and they along with agricultural laborers suffered at the hands of merciless landlords. Sharecroppers and laborers briefly allied with the Communist Party during the 1930s and challenged the capitalist system that entrapped them in exploitive monoculture through participation in sharecropper unions. White supremacists responded with violence. These competing agendas between black landowners, cash- and share-rent tenants, and laborers created fertile ground for the emergence of militant Black Power and overtly separatist goals pursued by Black Muslims through the Nation of Islam in the aftermath of the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.Less
Veronica L. Womack argues that white land control, an impoverished working class, and violent race relations resulted in a distinctive form of Black Power in Alabama. African Americans purchased land despite this, but Alabama still had the second lowest rate of black landownership among black farmers in the South in 1900. Most black farmers in the state operated farms on the cash-rent system. Sharecroppers likewise farmed, and they along with agricultural laborers suffered at the hands of merciless landlords. Sharecroppers and laborers briefly allied with the Communist Party during the 1930s and challenged the capitalist system that entrapped them in exploitive monoculture through participation in sharecropper unions. White supremacists responded with violence. These competing agendas between black landowners, cash- and share-rent tenants, and laborers created fertile ground for the emergence of militant Black Power and overtly separatist goals pursued by Black Muslims through the Nation of Islam in the aftermath of the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Muna Ali
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780190664435
- eISBN:
- 9780190664466
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190664435.003.0002
- Subject:
- Religion, Islam
This chapter gives a brief historical tour of Muslim America to provide a context for situating the younger generations of Muslims— the second and third generations of immigrants and of convert ...
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This chapter gives a brief historical tour of Muslim America to provide a context for situating the younger generations of Muslims— the second and third generations of immigrants and of convert Muslims— in both intra-community and societal dynamics. It shows the ethno-racial and class diversity of this group, then provides a detailed profile of the participants in this ethnographic study. The two study areas—Chicagoland and Phoenix-valley—are also described in regard to their Muslim residents. This chapter argues that though immigrant and convert Muslim Americas are often presented as having parallel histories, theirs is a shared history in which they have coauthored each chapter, in spite of their divergent origins and internal tensions.Less
This chapter gives a brief historical tour of Muslim America to provide a context for situating the younger generations of Muslims— the second and third generations of immigrants and of convert Muslims— in both intra-community and societal dynamics. It shows the ethno-racial and class diversity of this group, then provides a detailed profile of the participants in this ethnographic study. The two study areas—Chicagoland and Phoenix-valley—are also described in regard to their Muslim residents. This chapter argues that though immigrant and convert Muslim Americas are often presented as having parallel histories, theirs is a shared history in which they have coauthored each chapter, in spite of their divergent origins and internal tensions.
Muna Ali
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780190664435
- eISBN:
- 9780190664466
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190664435.003.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Islam
This introductory chapter presents three vignettes that illustrate the four narratives that frame this book: the notion of an identity crisis among young Muslims, the purported conflict between a ...
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This introductory chapter presents three vignettes that illustrate the four narratives that frame this book: the notion of an identity crisis among young Muslims, the purported conflict between a “pure or true” Islam and a “cultural” Islam, an alleged “Islamization of America,” and the imperative for creating an American Muslim community and culture. It also sketches the methodology employed in the book, detailing the centrality of a narrative framework from the inception of this project to its methods, the challenges encountered, the analysis, and ultimately to the production of this ethnographic narrative. This beginning chapter argues that narrative is a particularly useful way to examine identity.Less
This introductory chapter presents three vignettes that illustrate the four narratives that frame this book: the notion of an identity crisis among young Muslims, the purported conflict between a “pure or true” Islam and a “cultural” Islam, an alleged “Islamization of America,” and the imperative for creating an American Muslim community and culture. It also sketches the methodology employed in the book, detailing the centrality of a narrative framework from the inception of this project to its methods, the challenges encountered, the analysis, and ultimately to the production of this ethnographic narrative. This beginning chapter argues that narrative is a particularly useful way to examine identity.
Dawn-Marie Gibson and Jamillah Karim
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814769959
- eISBN:
- 9780814771242
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814769959.003.0002
- Subject:
- Religion, Islam
This chapter explores women's encounters with the Black Muslims, women's experiences of life within the Nation of Islam (NOI), and their collective and individual contributions to building and ...
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This chapter explores women's encounters with the Black Muslims, women's experiences of life within the Nation of Islam (NOI), and their collective and individual contributions to building and sustaining the Nation's structures. While the chapter is not focused on the inner power struggles and leadership abuses that engulfed the Chicago and New York branches of the movement, it does consider women's responses to leadership crises within the group. The majority of the women highlighted are former members of the Nation, currently in the Warith Deen Mohammed (WDM) community, who joined the Nation in the 1960s and 1970s. Topics discussed include the women's first encounters with the NOI; life in the NOI; Nation women's dress code, diet, marriage, education, work, and activism; and NOI politics.Less
This chapter explores women's encounters with the Black Muslims, women's experiences of life within the Nation of Islam (NOI), and their collective and individual contributions to building and sustaining the Nation's structures. While the chapter is not focused on the inner power struggles and leadership abuses that engulfed the Chicago and New York branches of the movement, it does consider women's responses to leadership crises within the group. The majority of the women highlighted are former members of the Nation, currently in the Warith Deen Mohammed (WDM) community, who joined the Nation in the 1960s and 1970s. Topics discussed include the women's first encounters with the NOI; life in the NOI; Nation women's dress code, diet, marriage, education, work, and activism; and NOI politics.
Dalton Conley
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520215863
- eISBN:
- 9780520921733
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520215863.003.0005
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
The author recounts the details of the burglary that struck the apartment in which he lived twice which completely shattered his sense of security. He observes that crime and violence were not ...
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The author recounts the details of the burglary that struck the apartment in which he lived twice which completely shattered his sense of security. He observes that crime and violence were not uncommon in this area, but they always seemed to happen elsewhere and could be avoided. He realizes that break-ins were not a common occurrence for most families in America and that having bars on the windows was not normal. He studied karate and took lessons from a black Muslim sensei named Rahim, formerly Robert, with the express purpose of becoming tough enough to feel secure. He had moved up a rank in the karate hierarchy, his association with Rahim did not achieve the intended goal of feeling safe and secure in the neighborhood, and for a simple reason: within a year Rahim was shot and killed.Less
The author recounts the details of the burglary that struck the apartment in which he lived twice which completely shattered his sense of security. He observes that crime and violence were not uncommon in this area, but they always seemed to happen elsewhere and could be avoided. He realizes that break-ins were not a common occurrence for most families in America and that having bars on the windows was not normal. He studied karate and took lessons from a black Muslim sensei named Rahim, formerly Robert, with the express purpose of becoming tough enough to feel secure. He had moved up a rank in the karate hierarchy, his association with Rahim did not achieve the intended goal of feeling safe and secure in the neighborhood, and for a simple reason: within a year Rahim was shot and killed.
Donald A. Erickson
- Published in print:
- 1986
- Published Online:
- November 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780195037104
- eISBN:
- 9780197565612
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780195037104.003.0010
- Subject:
- Education, Philosophy and Theory of Education
In this chapter an attempt is made, in the light of evidence from the United States and Canada, to explain in general terms the ebb and flow of private ...
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In this chapter an attempt is made, in the light of evidence from the United States and Canada, to explain in general terms the ebb and flow of private school options. Both public and private school growth and decline are affected by demography. Thus, a massive drop in Catholic school enrollment from 1966 to 1981 reflects, in part, a birthrate decline and a migration of Catholics from central cities, where many Catholic schools existed, to suburbs, where there were few Catholic schools. But unlike public school attendance, which rarely involves user fees and is considered normal if not laudatory in the United States and parts of Canada, private school attendance generally occurs when parents decide to depart from normal practice, incurring extra cost, extra effort (many private school patrons must drive their children considerable distances to school), disruption of their children’s friendships (many private school students are not in the schools which most of their neighborhood friends attend), and sometimes social disapproval. To a far greater extent than public school enrollment, then, private school enrollment depends on patron motivations. To return to the Catholic example: Even if the Catholic birthrate were high and Catholic schools were universally accessible, those schools would soon collapse unless many Catholic parents considered them worth extra expense and effort. Also, while public schools are everywhere available, parents often cannot find the private schools they prefer. Some schools exist primarily for certain religious and ethnic groups. Schools of some types are available only in a few major cities. Some schools are beyond the fiscal reach of most people. It is no accident, in this regard, that religious options are more plentiful in private schools than curricular or pedagogical options. Most religiously oriented schools enjoy subsidies from religious groups. Many schools open in the facilities of churches and synagogues, thus avoiding major expense. Sometimes churches and other denominational agencies directly sponsor schools. Even when they do not, they often assist by taking special collections, or their members provide free labor. Many Jewish day schools are subsidized through Jewish community funds.
Less
In this chapter an attempt is made, in the light of evidence from the United States and Canada, to explain in general terms the ebb and flow of private school options. Both public and private school growth and decline are affected by demography. Thus, a massive drop in Catholic school enrollment from 1966 to 1981 reflects, in part, a birthrate decline and a migration of Catholics from central cities, where many Catholic schools existed, to suburbs, where there were few Catholic schools. But unlike public school attendance, which rarely involves user fees and is considered normal if not laudatory in the United States and parts of Canada, private school attendance generally occurs when parents decide to depart from normal practice, incurring extra cost, extra effort (many private school patrons must drive their children considerable distances to school), disruption of their children’s friendships (many private school students are not in the schools which most of their neighborhood friends attend), and sometimes social disapproval. To a far greater extent than public school enrollment, then, private school enrollment depends on patron motivations. To return to the Catholic example: Even if the Catholic birthrate were high and Catholic schools were universally accessible, those schools would soon collapse unless many Catholic parents considered them worth extra expense and effort. Also, while public schools are everywhere available, parents often cannot find the private schools they prefer. Some schools exist primarily for certain religious and ethnic groups. Schools of some types are available only in a few major cities. Some schools are beyond the fiscal reach of most people. It is no accident, in this regard, that religious options are more plentiful in private schools than curricular or pedagogical options. Most religiously oriented schools enjoy subsidies from religious groups. Many schools open in the facilities of churches and synagogues, thus avoiding major expense. Sometimes churches and other denominational agencies directly sponsor schools. Even when they do not, they often assist by taking special collections, or their members provide free labor. Many Jewish day schools are subsidized through Jewish community funds.