Building the South Side explores the struggle for influence that dominated the planning and development of Chicago's South Side during the Progressive Era. Robin F. Bachin examines the early days of the University of Chicago, Chicago's public parks, Comiskey Park, and the Black Belt to consider how community leaders looked to the physical design of the city to shape its culture and promote civic interaction. Bachin highlights how the creation of a local terrain of civic culture was a contested process, with the battle for cultural authority transforming urban politics and blurring...
Building the South Side explores the struggle for influence that dominated the planning and development of Chicago's South Side during the Prog...
In "Selling the Race," Adam Green tells the story of how black Chicagoans were at the center of a national movement in the 1940s and 50s, a time when African Americans across the country first started to see themselves as part of a single culture. Along the way, he offers fascinating reinterpretations of such events as the 1940 American Negro Exposition, the rise of black music and the culture industry that emerged around it, the development of the Associated Negro Press and the founding of Johnson Publishing, and the outcry over the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till.
By presenting African...
In "Selling the Race," Adam Green tells the story of how black Chicagoans were at the center of a national movement in the 1940s and 50s, a time wh...
Historians have devoted surprisingly little attention to African American urban history ofthe postwar period, especially compared with earlier decades. Correcting this imbalance, "African American Urban History since World War II" features an exciting mix of seasoned scholars and fresh new voices whose combined efforts provide the first comprehensive assessment of this important subject.
The first of this volume s five groundbreaking sections focuses on black migration and Latino immigration, examining tensions and alliances that emerged between African Americans and other groups....
Historians have devoted surprisingly little attention to African American urban history ofthe postwar period, especially compared with earlier deca...
Northern whites in the post-World War II era began to support the principle of civil rights, so why did many of them continue to oppose racial integration in their communities? Challenging conventional wisdom about the growth, prosperity, and racial exclusivity of American suburbs, David M. P. Freund argues that previous attempts to answer this question have overlooked a change in the racial thinking of whites and the role of suburban politics in effecting this change. In "Colored Property," he shows how federal intervention spurred a dramatic shift in the language and logic of residential...
Northern whites in the post-World War II era began to support the principle of civil rights, so why did many of them continue to oppose racial integra...
In this fascinating history, Chad Heap reveals that the reality of slumming was far more widespread and important than nostalgia-tinged recollections would lead us to believe. From its appearance as a fashionable dissipation centered on the immigrant and working-class districts of 1880s New York through its spread to Chicago and into the 1930s nightspots frequented by lesbians and gay men, "Slumming" charts the development of this popular pastime, demonstrating how its moralizing origins were soon outstripped by the artistic, racial, and sexual adventuring that typified Jazz-Age America....
In this fascinating history, Chad Heap reveals that the reality of slumming was far more widespread and important than nostalgia-tinged recollectio...
"Blueprint for Disaster "traces public housing s history in Chicago from its New Deal roots through current mayor Richard M. Daley s Plan for Transformation. In the process, D. Bradford Hunt chronicles the Chicago Housing Authority s own transformation from the city s most progressive government agency to its largest slumlord.
Challenging explanations that attribute the projects decline primarilyto racial discrimination and real estate interests, Hunt argues that well-intentioned but misguided policy decisions ranging from design choices to maintenance contracts also paved the road to...
"Blueprint for Disaster "traces public housing s history in Chicago from its New Deal roots through current mayor Richard M. Daley s Plan for Trans...
In this vivid portrait of life in Chicago in the fifty years after the Civil War, Margaret Garb traces the history of the American celebration of home ownership. As the nation moved from an agrarian to an industrialized urban society, the competing visions of capitalists, reformers, and immigrants turned the urban landscape into a testing ground for American values. Neither a natural progression nor an inevitable outcome, the ideal of home ownership emerged from the struggles of industrializing cities. Garb skillfully narrates these struggles, showing how the American infatuation with home...
In this vivid portrait of life in Chicago in the fifty years after the Civil War, Margaret Garb traces the history of the American celebration of home...
Between the early 1900s and the late 1950s, the attitudes of white Californians toward their Asian American neighbors evolved from outright hostility to relative acceptance. Charlotte Brooks examines this transformation through the lens of California s urban housing markets, arguing that the perceived foreignness of Asian Americans, which initially stranded them in segregated areas, eventually facilitated their integration into neighborhoods that rejected other minorities. Against the backdrop of cold war efforts to win Asian hearts and minds, whites who saw little difference between...
Between the early 1900s and the late 1950s, the attitudes of white Californians toward their Asian American neighbors evolved from outright hostili...
"The Transatlantic Collapse of Urban Renewal" examines how postwar thinkers from both sides of the Atlantic considered urban landscapes radically changed by the political and physical realities of sprawl, urban decay, and urban renewal. With a sweep that encompasses New York, London, Berlin, Philadelphia, and Toronto, among others, Christopher Klemek traces changing responses to the challenging issues that most affected the lives of the world's cities. In the postwar decades, the principles of modernist planning came to be challenged-in the grassroots revolts against the building of...
"The Transatlantic Collapse of Urban Renewal" examines how postwar thinkers from both sides of the Atlantic considered urban landscapes radically c...
The building and management of public housing is often seen as a signal failure of American public policy, but this is a vastly oversimplified view. In"Purging the Poorest," Lawrence J. Vale offers a new narrative of the seventy-five-year struggle to house the deserving poor. In the 1930s, two iconic American cities, Atlanta and Chicago, demolished their slums and established some of this country s first public housing. Six decades later, these same cities also led the way in clearing public housing itself. Vale s groundbreaking history of these twice-cleared communities provides...
The building and management of public housing is often seen as a signal failure of American public policy, but this is a vastly oversimplified view. I...
