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Black Metropolis

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In the first few chapters of Black Metropolis, St. Clair Drake and Horace R. Cayton provide historical context on the early development of Chicago as the site for an emerging city, which became the American Midwest epicenter that incited significant social, economic and political changes that transformed the country. The authors also establish a foundation that helps to understand the allure of the Windy City, which contributed to the mass exodus of African Americans from the South during the Great Migration that ultimately created the “black metropolis.” While examining the text, what specifically stood out was the following quote: “The distinctive thing about the Black Belt is that while other such “colonies” tend to break up with the passage of time, the Negro area becomes increasingly more concentrated.” This quote indirectly references the …show more content…

However, I am also interested in analyzing the role this played in terms of sociocultural factors that have created the black Southside Chicago mindset in connection to space and the ownership of it. How has the significance of the black belt contributed to what black Chicagoans internalize and understand as their designated space? How do they understand their access to other parts of the city? Do they believe that the black belt is their only safe space in Chicago in a contemporary setting given the remaining large number of blacks on the Southside today? How has the designation of the black belt as the “black metropolis and Bronzeville become a marker of black pride and cultural and historical heritage limited socioeconomic mobility of the residents on an internal level removed from Chicago’s systemic

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Thomas W. Hanchett is a historian, who taught urban history and history preservation at Young Town State University and Cornell University. Hanchett is now currently working at the Levine Museum of New South in Charlotte as the staff historian and he is also the author of Sorting Out the New South City. Race, Class, and Urban Development in Charlotte 1875-1975. The book is filled with his remarkable outpouring ideas that talks a lot about Charlotte during 1875-1975. He breaks down the content of the book into eight different tables and fifty-eight figures to help reader to understand his idea with a broader sense.

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The overall argument of Robert O. Self’s Introduction, in the book “American Babylon,” are the different aspects of postwar Oakland and the East Bay, socially, economically, and politically. There are three key claims Self makes in the Introduction. First, Self claims there were two controversial political ideologies in postwar Oakland, one being black power, including politics of deference and empowerment, and second a neo-populist, conservative homeowner politics of white residents. Another claim Self makes is the idea that the postwar black struggle and politics of suburban building shaped the political culture in Oakland and the East Bay. The third key claim Self makes is the modernization of space; space as property, as a social imagination, and as a political scale.

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Whites took “the wretched conditions” of Paradise Valley as “the fault of irresponsible blacks, not greedy landlords or neglectful city officials,” and because housing was a “powerful symbol of ‘making it’”, whites in Detroit saw this plight as “personal failure and family breakdown,” (Sugrue, 216-217). As a result of the social changes which emerged during the postwar period, Sugrue explains that “Detroit was… torn by cataclysmic violence…” (Sugrue, 260). Sugrue’s claim that, rather than taking the riot of 1967 as the catalyst for urban crisis in Detroit, one must understand a number of factors which preceded the riot in order to understand this issue, is well-defended by numerous anecdotes detailing the the history of Detroit since the postwar period.

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In the Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit by Thomas Sugrue he talks about, how the poorly planned city lead to massive poverty and inequality amongst the people in Detroit. Mr.Sugrue shows us how Detroit desperately depended on the automotive company Chrysler. Mr.Sugrue in a way shows is how Detroit parallels the south of America with its dependency on slaver and once slaver ended or in this case Chrysler left Detroit, there was no longer a sustainable economy. Mr. Sugrue explains how housing had become a major problem for “organized political activity in the 1940s, where Detroiters, black and white, fought a battle that would define Detroit politics for decades to follow" (55).

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The Devil in The White City, by Erik Larson is a curious piece of history work, the book is not historical fiction nor is it a basic book of history. Mister Larson has created a book that is an essential work in understanding America and her people in the early 1890’s and the rise of Chicago as being one of the most important cities in the United States. Before the magic that transformed Chicago into the famous White City, Chicago was known by a different title: The Black City. Chicago in the late 1800’s was not an easy or clean place to live in, as one Chicagoan, Ben Hecht, states “It was pleasant, in a way, to know that outside their windows the devil was still capering in a flare of brimstone.” What change Chicago from staying as the dangerous

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Black on White, and White on Black violence was a regular occurrence. Many knew that a riot was impending due to the signs that were around, especially regarding the racial tension. What could be added to the tension was the growth of the city with regard to the mix of people as mentioned earlier – ex-confederates, “backwoods preachers, Southern white evangelists, and shouters” was part of the population. This meant that Detroit became a melting pot not only for religious and racial intolerance, but also for agitators such as the Black Legion, and the Ku Klux Klan. Brown’s view gives one an overview of Detroit that was perhaps built on the wrong foundations, and which led to what it became in the twenty-first century as well – the fourth city of the United States that died because of its race intolerance.

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Ryan McCaffery Mrs. Yale-Wasdyke / Mr. Herman AP U.S. History II 5 September 2016 The city of Chicago’s transition from the Black City to the White City was able to not only revitalize the city, but the country as a whole.  Americans, especially Chicagoans, were in dire need of something to reinstill pride in their nation, and the White City was able to do just that.

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The “Black Great Migration” represents one of the greatest social, political, and economic alterations in American history.

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Free People of Color: Inside the African American Community, written by James Oliver Horton, is an interesting book that portrays antebellum African American communities and its occupants whose lives were both confounded by prohibitive powers and brought together by common goals. It explores dynamic debates within these communities over gender, color, and national identities, as well as leadership styles and politics. Published in 1993, this book uncovers the diversity and distinctions of free black society in northern cities such as Boston, Buffalo, and Washington D.C. A Smithsonian director and an American civilization professor at George Washington University in Washington D.C., Horton captivates the reader with a compelling study of the

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“Late one night, when we were all in bed, Mrs. O’Leary lit a lantern in the shed. Her cow kicked it over, then winked her eye and said, ‘There’ll be a hot time in the old town tonight!’ (Abbott)” In 1871, a disaster arose in Chicago and reshaped the city permanently: a fire scorched around three square miles of land, leveled thousands of buildings, and stole hundreds of lives (“Chicago Fire of 1871”). Although the effects of this tragedy were harrowing, it actually served as the catalyst which allowed Chicago to become one of America’s largest, most influential cities.

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I will serve as the principal investigator conducting independent research on black cultural geographies of Chicago. As a self-design major in black cultural studies with a minor in geography, I examine the intersection between geography, black culture and music as an emerging geomusicologist. I am interested in the ways that space helps to form the cultural identities of black Chicagoans, the spatial diffusion of black culture across multiples scales and how placed based ideologies and black geographies are constructed, creating a new form of cultural capital. I use ethnomusicological and geographic methods to identify black geographies and how geography happens to black people and the ways in which they articulate their spatial narratives

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Professor Khalil Girban Muhammad gave an understanding of the separate and combined influences that African Americans and Whites had in making of present day urban America. Muhammad’s lecture was awakening, informative and true, he was extremely objective and analytical in his ability to scan back and forth across the broad array of positive and negative influences. Muhammad described all the many factors during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries since the abolition of slavery and also gave many examples of how blackness was condemned in American society in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Professor Muhammad was able to display how on one hand, initial limitations made blacks seem inferior, and various forms of white prejudice made things worse. But on the other hand, when given the same education and opportunities, there are no differences between black and white achievements and positive contributions to society.

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The new development in progression today shows the idea of how marketable land around the city is and how diverse neighborhoods cause for better funding and better relationships between people of different ethnicities and cultures. Even though the Chicago Race Riots was a negative event, over the years its effects became positive. As a result of all the looting and burning down businesses, it gave the developers a chance to integrate new business ideas and housing plans to help advance the community in the future. This is one of the major historical events used today as a lesson taught to students to eliminate

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According to William Julius Wilson in When Jobs Disappear the transition from the institutional/Communal Ghetto to the Jobless/Dark Ghetto was driven by economic transformations in American from the late 1960’s to the 1990’s. While for Logic Waquant in Urban Outsiders, thought the economic factors were significant; the political factors were more impact. William Julius Wilson most studied about south side of Chicago it’s a classical example of inner city its wasn’t like before in the 1960’s it’s was a community and by the late 70’s the community was gone. According to Wilson, even though it’s was gone the community was not even a wealth community its was a poor community the majority member of that community where indeed Black American

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Lance Freeman, an associate professor of urban planning in Columbia, wanted to investigate if there was any displacement going on in two predominantly black neighborhoods that was briskly gentrifying. Much to his dismay, he couldn’t find any correlation between gentrification and displacement. What was surprising to Freeman was his discovery, “poor residents and those without a college education were actually less likely to move if they resided in gentrifying neighborhoods”. (Sternbergh, 19) Freeman adds, “The discourse on gentrification, has tended to overlook the possibility that some of the neighborhood changes associated with gentrification might be appreciated by the prior residents.” (Sternbergh, 19)

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