Moving On Out: Black Pioneering in Chicago, 1915-1950

Abstract

In the first half of the twentieth century, many African Americans placed their hopes in property ownership and upward mobility to legitimize black claims to full citizenship. However, “black pioneers” were caught between a hostile white world and the deteriorating conditions in the overcrowded ghetto. While this story is usually told from the vantage point of whites who reacted to such “invasions” with hostility and flight, I center the experiences of black pioneers who were agents of spatial and socioeconomic expansion as well as instigators of integration. Despite the legal and extralegal barriers erected to keep African Americans in the ghetto, black pioneers consistently demonstrated that they would not be contained by these artificial fences. Most often pioneers were from the black middle class, as these men and women had the means and the business connections to purchase homes in white areas.