Bronzeville: Black Chicago in Pictures, 1941-1943 Review

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Bronzeville: Black Chicago in Pictures, 1941-1943 ReviewWarning: Once you pick this book up, you won't be able to put it down.
I first skimmed it simply to enjoy the compelling photographs...that alone would have been enough for the money. But then add the text, especially the contemporary accounts from Richard Wright, and you'll feel you've time travelled. I've read about the Great Migration, but this book lives it.
Chicago was the "black capital" in the 1940's, having supplanted Harlem as the center of black culture and nationalism. It was home to notables like Joe Lewis, Thomas A. Dorsey, Mahalia Jackson, Ebony Magazine and Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad. But the most arresting images and stories here are about the everyday people, ranging from grim images of the overcrowded slums to the more joyful life: a crowd watching the orchestra at the Savoy Ballroom, kids lined up in front of the movie theater, the Easter Parade outside Pilgrim Baptist. The book is divided into four parts: House & Home, Work, Church, Going Out.
One of the original essays discusses the fact that during the time period, most white media images of blacks perpetuated negative stereotypes, while many black photographers strove to counter this with "the strongest possible contrast to such representation." Which makes this collection even more important in that it presents such a wide range of people and situations, without trying to support an agenda. The photographers simply captured life.
I agree: This book should be a part of every photography and African American history collection.
Curator, AfroAmericanHeritage.comBronzeville: Black Chicago in Pictures, 1941-1943 Overview

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Chicago's New Negroes: Modernity, the Great Migration, and Black Urban Life Review

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Chicago's New Negroes: Modernity, the Great Migration, and Black Urban Life ReviewFrom its opening pages, Chicago's New Negroes delivers a knockout punch. Baldwin opens his monograph with a retelling of Jack Johnson's 1910 heavyweight victory and its impact on Black Chicago, and thus only begins to weave an epic and compelling tapestry that demonstrates how Black people "acted" rather than were "acted upon." He resituates ideas once limited to discussions of the Harlem Renaissance and moves them geographically to Great Migration-era Chicago. There, dots are connected to demonstrate the very tangible relationship between consumer culture and intellectual life.
To the reader's delight, Baldwin resists the tendency to provide a straightforward "history" of African Americans in Chicago in the early twentieth century. While the text does follow the stories and innovations of such major players as Madame CJ Walker, Thomas A. Dorsey, Oscar Micheaux and baseball's Rube Foster, it also provides a much needed space in which we get to hear the thoughts and words of everyday people, those who sat in beauty parlors, enjoyed the early years of cinema, attended sporting events, and made a way despite the racial, social and economic limitations. We soon determine that southern migrants to Chicago brought with them not country ways, but entirely new, entirely modern, ways of thinking.
For authors, allowing everyday people to speak for themselves is sometimes difficult. Yet, Baldwin manages to make these voices heard and it is a credit to his writing style. His presentation is especially adept in the sports chapter. Here, Baldwin takes the reader on a tour of Black Chicago's various "playgrounds." We have no problem envisioning the juking, the fakes, the fast forwards, the trucking, the passing and dribbling and their possible meanings for building a better world.
Through chapters devoted to the "mapping" of the Black Metropolis, beauty culture, film exhibition and filmmaking, the rise of gospel music and the sporting life, Baldwin allows a glimpse into a world of possibility, a world where popular culture is just as, if not more, worthy of study as so-called arts and letters. He forces a new understanding of even the Harlem Renaissance, an ambitious project for sure. While the book is a scholarly monograph, Baldwin's forays into social and cultural theory are so nuanced as to make the book accessible to a wider audience. And for that we should be thankful. Even though the urgent and triumphant stories within Chicago's New Negroes take place seventy five or a hundred years ago, the lessons we learn from them and the hope we take with us when we close the book are timeless. And are even more so in an era when Black culture is appropriated, diffused, and often taken for granted.Chicago's New Negroes: Modernity, the Great Migration, and Black Urban Life Overview

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