Awards

• Winner of <DIV>Received a Superior Achievement Award from the Illinois State Historical Society, 2012.</DIV> 2012

Overview

During the Roaring '20s, African Americans rapidly transformed their Chicago into a ""black metropolis."" In this book, Christopher Robert Reed describes the rise of African Americans in Chicago's political economy, bringing to life the fleeting vibrancy of this dynamic period of racial consciousness and solidarity. Reed shows how African Americans rapidly transformed Chicago and achieved political and economic recognition by building on the massive population growth after the Great Migration from the South, the entry of a significant working class into the city's industrial work force, and the proliferation of black churches. Mapping out the labor issues and the struggle for control of black politics and black business, Reed offers an unromanticized view of the entrepreneurial efforts of black migrants, reassessing previous accounts such as St. Clair Drake and Horace R. Cayton's 1945 study Black Metropolis. Utilizing a wide range of historical data, The Rise of Chicago's Black Metropolis, 1920–1929 delineates a web of dynamic social forces to shed light on black businesses and the establishment of a black professional class. The exquisitely researched volume draws on fictional and nonfictional accounts of the era, black community guides, mainstream and community newspapers, contemporary scholars and activists, and personal interviews.

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9780252036231

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Reviews

An important contribution to the field of African American urban history and the history of black Chicago in particular. Reed persuasively cites the need for a reappraisal of Cayton and Drake's classic depiction of Chicago's 'Black Metropolis' by illuminating the role of professionals and political and religious organizations. Robert E. Weems Jr., author of Black Business in the Black Metropolis: The Chicago Metropolitan Assurance Company, 1925-1985 What is perhaps most beneficial to scholars of urban studies is the convincing and systematic way that The Rise of Chicago's Black Metropolis helps us to reconsider the analysis that has long held ground as the authority on the rise of African American Chicago in the early twentieth century, namely, St. Clair Drake and Horace R. Cayton's Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City (1945). Reed invites future scholarship on the subject in offering not only a call for rethinking but also a method for doing so... Reed highlights what Drake and Cayton touched on when he identifies what made the 1920s distinct, and revises their classic text as he applies the historical method to describe business, politics, religion, and activism in considerable detail [...] What Reed has produced with The Rise of Chicago's Black Metropolis, 1920-1929 is a persuasive argument for the emergence of a relative African American triumphalism without the piety and sentimentalism that can often accompany such renderings, and a thorough accounting of the developments and contexts that made such possible. - Keona K. Ervin, University of Missouri, on H-Urban, Dec 2012

An important contribution to the field of African American urban history and the history of black Chicago in particular. Reed persuasively cites the need for a reappraisal of Cayton and Drake's classic depiction of Chicago's 'Black Metropolis' by illuminating the role of professionals and political and religious organizations. Robert E. Weems Jr., author of Black Business in the Black Metropolis: The Chicago Metropolitan Assurance Company, 1925-1985

""An important contribution to the field of African American urban history and the history of black Chicago in particular. Reed persuasively cites the need for a reappraisal of Cayton and Drake's classic depiction of Chicago's 'Black Metropolis' by illuminating the role of professionals and political and religious organizations."" Robert E. Weems Jr., author of Black Business in the Black Metropolis: The Chicago Metropolitan Assurance Company, 1925-1985 ""What is perhaps most beneficial to scholars of urban studies is the convincing and systematic way that The Rise of Chicago's Black Metropolis helps us to reconsider the analysis that has long held ground as the authority on the rise of African American Chicago in the early twentieth century, namely, St. Clair Drake and Horace R. Cayton's Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City (1945). Reed invites future scholarship on the subject in offering not only a call for rethinking but also a method for doing so... Reed highlights what Drake and Cayton touched on when he identifies what made the 1920s distinct, and revises their classic text as he applies the historical method to describe business, politics, religion, and activism in considerable detail [...] What Reed has produced with The Rise of Chicago's Black Metropolis, 1920-1929 is a persuasive argument for the emergence of a relative African American triumphalism without the piety and sentimentalism that can often accompany such renderings, and a thorough accounting of the developments and contexts that made such possible.""- Keona K. Ervin, University of Missouri, on H-Urban, Dec 2012

Author Information

Christopher R. Reed is a professor emeritus of history at Roosevelt University and the author of ""All the World is Here"": The Black Presence at White City and The Chicago NAACP and the Rise of Black Professional Leadership, 1910–1966.

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