History professor documents rise of black Chicago and hard times that follow

Posted: 01/24/2012

The rise of a black metropolis on Chicago’s south side during the 1920s and its decline during the Great Depression are examined for the first time in two new books by Roosevelt University Professor Emeritus of History Christopher R. Reed.

The foremost expert on the history of African Americans in Chicago, Reed documents the rise of black Chicago’s economy, politics and culture, which flowered during the 1920s in Chicago’s Bronzeville, in the book, The Rise of Chicago’s Black Metropolis, 1920-1929.

Noted for its growing numbers of African Americans working in the steel and meat packing industries, at the U.S Post Office and in professional careers and in their own banks and businesses, this Renaissance period rivals New York’s Harlem Renaissance, according to Reed.

“It is a pioneering study and comprehensive review of one of the greatest periods in Black Chicago’s history,” said Reed, who has been Rise of Black Metropolis by Christopher Reed

Rise of Black Metropolis by Christopher Reed

studying and writing about the first 100 years of African-American settlement and contributions to Chicago for more than a decade.

Black Chicago’s Renaissance came to an end during the Great Depression, a time of hopelessness and despair for all Americans including black Chicagoans, whom Reed writes about in his new book The Depression Comes to the South Side: Protest and Politics in the Black Metropolis, 1930-1933.

Reed finds that black Chicagoans were active participants in a number of protest movements during the Great Depression period, including the “Don’t Spend Your Money Where You Can’t Work” campaign against Woolworth’s in 1930; the street car riots of 1932; the housing eviction riots of 1931; and the relief-station disturbances of 1932.

“The book unveils a past for black Chicagoans that had been unknown and invisible, and that past is very much about activism,” said Reed. “History shows that this group didn’t just stay on the sidelines and do nothing when confronted with adversity. In fact, during this tumultuous period, black Chicagoans marched in large numbers alongside whites in protest against the government and its lack of action in helping those without jobs during the Great Depression,” he said.

The books follow the careers of two of black Chicago’s most influential early City Hall politicians, Edward H. Wright and Oscar DePriest. Both were part of a Chicago Republican Party machine that was in power during the Twenties, but which lost favor with all but black Chicagoans during the Great Depression.

It also highlights black Chicago’s contributions to writing and music, including the beginnings of a literature Renaissance that would continue into the late 1930s and 1940s by African American writers including Richard Wright.

“Harlem has always enjoyed the spotlight for its Renaissance, but my research shows that black Chicago had its own Renaissance,” said Reed, whose research and writings bring to life for the first time the African Americans who helped build Chicago’s south side black metropolis, an area spanning both sides of State Street between 26th and 55th streets.

Published by the University of Illinois Press, The Rise of Chicago’s Black Metropolis, 1920-1929, challenges the notion that blacks living on Chicago’s south side were not successful during the time period. The book is “an important contribution to the field of African American urban history and the history of black Chicago in particular,” according to Robert E. Weems Jr., who has written extensively on black businesses in Bronzeville.

Published by Indiana University Press, The Depression Comes to the South Side “touches on themes that are compelling for their relevance nearly a century later,” according to Kim Butler of Rutgers University. “The story of economic downturn and its effects – homelessness, joblessness, corruption – are clearly issues of great interest today,” she said.

Both books are available at www.amazon.com. For more information or for an interview, contact Laura Janota at 312-341-3511 or Christopher Reed at creed@roosevelt.edu.

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