Chicago and the Riddle of Race

Abstract

Chicago and the Riddle of Race Amy Absher Rashad Shabazz, Spatializing Blackness: Architecture of Confinement and Black Masculinity in Chicago. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015. 184 pp. $85, cloth. $25, paper. Christopher Robert Reed, The Rise of Chicago’s Black Metropolis, 1920–1929. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015. 288 pp. $95, cloth. $32, paper. Christopher Robert Reed, Knock at the Door of Opportunity: Black Migration to Chicago, 1900–1919. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2014. 390 pp. $52. Lionel Kimble Jr., A New Deal for Bronzeville: Housing, Employment and Civil Rights in Black Chicago, 1935–1955. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2015. 200 pp. $35. Robert E. Weems Jr. and Jason P. Chambers, ed., Building the Black Metropolis: African American Entrepreneurship in Chicago. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2017. 276 pp. $95, cloth. $30, paper. Joseph Gustaitis, Chicago Transformed: World War I and the Windy City. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2016. 368 pp. $25.89, paper. Mary Lou Finley, ed., The Chicago Freedom Movement: Martin Luther King Jr. and Civil Rights Activism in the North. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2015. 495 pp. $45. Natalie Y. Moore, The South Side: A Portrait of Chicago and American Segregation. New York: St. Martin’s, 2016. 272 pp. $28.99, cloth. $17, paper. The recent publications concerning the history of Chicago’s South Side all begin in much the same way. They note that Chicago is a city of neighborhoods; therefore, segregation became the defining historical [End Page 135] experience for the city’s inhabitants. Though segregation is not unique to Chicago, Chicago’s segregation is emblematic of the larger American history with race and urbanization. Why? Because segregation in Chicago has always been about more than housing. It haunts joblessness rates, shortened life spans, violence, policing, education, and gender. Segregation in Chicago did not end with the housing voucher programs or the election of Harold Washington. Likewise, segregation did not end in the nation at large with the integration of public schools or the election of President Obama. Currently, at the center of recent publications on Chicago history, is Christopher Robert Reed who demands we ask better questions. He wants readers and scholars to think carefully about segregation and how we book-end history. In The Rise of Chicago’s Black Metropolis: 1920–1929, Reed begins by challenging Drake and Cayton’s seminal work, Black Metropolis. What if, Reed asks, this foundational text had focused on the 1920s rather than beginning in the 1930s? Questioning the canon and origin myths of Chicago history is essential to Reed’s work. Indeed, in Knock at the Door of Opportunity: Black Migration to Chicago, 1900–1919, Reed challenges the work of Allan H. Spear and Rayford W. Logan by suggesting that “voluntary clustering” was the first step toward segregation and that Black Chicago’s history is not the history of urban blight. His approach is purposeful. Reed must dislodge the established segregation narrative so he might free the history from its stultifying focus on resistance movements. Ultimately, Reed wants readers to go beyond understanding history as statistics and conflict so as to move toward appreciating the community’s humanity. Reed intends his recent work to be a synthesis and an introspective reinterpretation of the canonical sources. A comparison of Reed’s style of synthesis with Joseph Gustaitis’s Chicago Transformed: World War I and the Windy City demonstrates just how varied the historical synthesis can be. With Reed there is a focus on argument. With Gustaitis there is a focus on details. Reed is able to remake and deepen our understanding of a well-traveled history. Gustaitis teaches his readers, but doesn’t challenge them to interpret. Furthermore, many new histories of Chicago are either imitating or inspired by the work of Christopher Reed. For instance, Robert E. Weems Jr. and Jason P. Chambers, editors of Building the Black Metropolis: African American Entrepreneurship in Chicago, focus on upending E. Franklin Frazier’s 1957 book Black Bourgeoisie, which refused to acknowledge the impact of slavery, Jim Crow segregation as well as mocked Black business [End Page 136] as a “myth,” and blamed business failure on the owners’ lack of acumen. By doing so...