Striving in Black Chicago: Migration, Work, and the Politics of Neighborhood Change 1935--1965

This dissertation explores black Chicagoans' efforts to continually remake their local communities during the Second Great Migration of black southerners to the city between 1935 and 1965. Other historians have described African American migration during and after World War II as a principal contributing factor in the making of the postwar ghetto and urban crisis. "Striving in Black Chicago" builds on those studies by showing that ordinary black Chicagoans' everyday struggles to sustain neighborhoods and to break down racial barriers to employment helped define the opportunities and limits of urban life, as well as the politics of class, social status, gender, and space within the Black Metropolis. This study pays particular attention to the evolution of African American neighborhoods and institutions during the changing contexts of the Depression, World War II, and the postwar urban upheaval caused by mass migration, slum clearance, white suburbanization, and the beginnings of deindustrialization. Historical interviews with black Chicagoans, block-level maps of neighborhood conditions, case studies of African Americans pushing the local and federal government to ensure racial equality in the housing and job markets, and a history of the Chicago Urban League in the postwar period show that black Chicagoans maintained a commitment to rebuild their communities in an era of rapid social change and deep racial inequality. A liberal vision prevailed that emphasized the preparation of workers for jobs in a changing employment market, economic development within black communities, and the creation of black political power. This vision motivated the black middle and working classes who built the greatly expanded postwar Black Metropolis, and propelled the independent black political movement that succeeded in electing Chicago's first black mayor, Harold Washington, in 1983. Most importantly, black Chicagoans connected everyday efforts to sustain local communities and to break down employment discrimination to a much larger national struggle against racial exclusion.