Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City

Summary

The explosive account of the arson wave that hit the Bronx and other American cities in the 1970s―and its legacy today.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning!” This phrase was supposedly uttered by announcers during the 1977 World Series as flames rose above Yankee Stadium, and it became a defining expression of a turbulent time in American history. Throughout the 1970s, a wave of arson coursed through American cities, destroying entire neighborhoods home to poor communities of color.

Historian Bench Ansfield explains in Born in Flames that the vast majority of the fires were not set by residents, as many believed, but by landlords looking for insurance payouts. Driven by perverse incentives, landlords hired “torches,” mostly Black and Brown youth, to set fires in the buildings. Tens of thousands of families lost their homes to these blazes, yet for much of the 1970s, tenant vandalism and welfare fraud stood as the prevailing explanations for the arson wave, effectively indemnifying landlords.

Based on a decade of research, Ansfield’s book introduces the term “brownlining” for the harmful insurance practices imposed on poor communities of color under the guise of racial redress. As the FIRE industries — finance, insurance, and real estate — eclipsed manufacturing in the 1970s, they began reshaping neighborhoods of color, seeing them as easy sources of profit. Ansfield charts the tenant-led resistance movements and the explosion of pop culture that erupted in response to the fires. The book reveals how these same insurance and race dynamics are at play today, especially in regions most at risk of climate shocks.