America's First Black Town: Brooklyn, Illinois, 1830-1915

Abstract

America's First Black Town: Brooklyn Illinois, 1830-1915. By Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua. (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2000. Pp. xiv, 276. Index. Cloth, $37.50) Nearly a half-century after Rayford Logan called period from 1877 to 1901 the nadir for African Americans in United States, scholars still grapple with precision of term as a description of era. Jim Crow strictures enacted in North and South were designed to hold African Americans in a position as close to slavery as possible, but at same time fostered community development initiatives. Thus at one end of spectrum, historians have viewed Black history of late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a sort of golden age, of black press, for example, or black women's clubs, black towns, and black business, reflecting Black nationalist impulses of post-emancipation era. Such efforts present African Americans frustrated but not defeated by white supremacy. At other end of spectrum, scholars have described abuses and insults imposed by Jim Crow, absurdities of segregation, and persistence of terrorism. Stepping between these points, Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua's commendable book, America's First Black Town: Brooklyn Illinois, 1830-1915, takes study of this period in new directions. Cha-Jua joins Shirley Portwood as one of very few scholars to consider Black life in Illinois outside of Chicago. Here, Cha-Jua examines development of Brooklyn, a small Black town in southern Illinois founded by escaped slaves from St. Louis, just across river. The book argues that the inter-relations of capitalism and racism structured situation of black urban residents, especially in and cities with majority black populations (p. 27) and proposes that paradigm applies to Brooklyn and numerous places where African Americans emerged as dominant political force. In doing so Cha-Jua draws on recent scholarship about culture and politics, migration and proletarianization, and infrapolitics and community dynamics. Given dearth of historical scholarship on black towns, Cha-Jua wisely builds on work of sociologists, economists, and political scientists. To create this fine-grained etymology of a black town, Founded by Change, Sustained by Courage, as town's motto reads, author draws on an impressive array of otherwise ordinary sources- newspapers, court records, manuscript census, deed books, city directories, marriage license records-- giving nuance to Black community life. Brooklyn originally was a freedom village, settled by escaped slaves and freepeople from St. Louis, result of the interaction between racial oppression and protonationalism [that] generated impulse to build black towns (3). Whether or not it was America's first black town, and what defines it as such, is a quibble. In any case, African Americans seized political power as a consequence of three factors: post-Civil War repeal of Black Laws that subsequently granted African Americans political rights; incorporation of village as a town distinct from surrounding municipalities; and migration of African Americans from South to North. They then controlled municipal politics after 1883. With industrialization process well underway in region, however, politics of autonomy yielded to an economics of dependency. For same reason that African Americans were attracted to Brooklyn-because it was a black town-Brooklyn was passed over in industrial development of metro-east region. …