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Black Chicago

The Making of a Negro Ghetto, 1890-1920

Allan Spear explores here the history of a major Negro community during a crucial thirty-year period when a relatively fluid patter of race relations gave way to a rigid system of segregation and discrimination. This is the first historical study of the ghetto made famous by the sociological classics of St. Clair Drake, E. Franklin Frazier, and others—by the novels of Richard Wright, and by countless blues songs. It was this ghetto that Martin Luther King, Jr., chose to focus on when he turned attention to the racial injustices of the North. Spear, by his objective treatment of the results of white racism, gives an effective, timely reminder of the serious urban problems that are the legacy of prejudice.

271 pages | 17 plates, 4 maps | 0.00 x 0.00 | © 1969

Black Studies

Chicago and Illinois

History: American History

Table of Contents

List of Plates
List of Maps
List of Tables
Introduction
Part I: The Rise of the Ghetto, 1890-1915
1. The Physical Ghetto
2. Jim Crow’s Triumph
3. Chicago’s Negro Elite
4. The New Leadership
5. The Institutional Ghetto
6. Business and Politics—the Quest for Self-Sufficiency
Part II: The Migration Years, 1915-20
7. From the South to the South Side
8. The Struggle for Homes and Jobs
9. The Impact of the Migration: Negro Community Life
10. The Impact of the Migration: Business and Politics
11. The Impact of the Migration: The White Response
Conclusion
A Note on Sources
Index

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