Christopher Robert Reed.Knock at the Door of Opportunity: Black Migration to Chicago, 1900–1919.

Abstract

Chicago’s African American population has drawn more scholarly attention than any other city in nineteenth and twentieth century American history. From Charles S. Johnson, St. Clair Drake, and Horace R. Cayton to the author of this present study, “Bronzeville” has become the preeminent paradigm of the multiple forces that shaped the black urban experience. Christopher Robert Reed, who has written numerous other volumes on Chicago’s black history, chronicles several familiar events and personalities in the period from 1900 to 1919. His main contribution, however, lies in his daring argument that this era should be understood through a continuous interpretive framework. Allan Spear’s Black Chicago: The Making of a Negro Ghetto, 1890–1920, has been, since its publication in 1967, the standard account of how the African American community developed in the same period discussed in the book. Reed, however, takes issue with the dominance of ghetto studies, like the Spear monograph, that explained the evolution of northern black communities as a narrative of compelled inferiority and limited opportunities. Ghetto studies emphasize how urban blight drew from anti-black forces that corralled African Americans into designated and declining residential areas. The theme of “despair and dysfunctionality” salient in ghetto studies, argues Reed, masked black initiatives in constructing the social, economic, and physical spaces that they voluntarily created for themselves.