We Had a Hammer

Every year, low- and moderate-income families around the country acquire homes through mutual self-help housing, a process by which they cooperatively plan and build their own and their neighbors' houses. Since its beginning in the New Deal's Subsistence Homesteads program, the mutual self-help movement advanced during the mid-twentieth century in the United States as activists drew funds and aid from postwar federal housing programs and the War on Poverty. Today, the federal mutual self-help program is housed in the Department of Agriculture's Rural Development office. Telling the history of mutual self-help from the bottom up, historian Tracy E. K'Meyer uncovers the stories of housing and antipoverty activists involved in landmark mutual self-help projects. K'Meyer argues that these organizers aimed to do more than build decent shelter: They saw themselves as part of a social movement employing grassroots organizing to overcome poverty and insecurity. While experts have documented self-help housing initiatives around the world, We Had a Hammer offers the first full-length history of the movement in the US, focusing on its connections to community organizing in twentieth century campaigns for social justice.