A Ghetto Takes Shape

In 1865, the Cleveland Leader boasted that ''an indication of the civilized spirit of the city of Cleveland is found in the fact that colored children attend our schools, colored people are permitted to attend all public lectures and public affairs where the fashion and culture of the city congregate, and nobody is offended.'' Yet, by 1915, the Central Avenue district of town, with its cheap lodging houses, deteriorating homes, and vice, housed a majority of the black population under conditions that were decidedly inferior to those of most of the rest of the city. Tracing the development of Cleveland's black community from its antebellum beginnings to the end of the 1920s, Kenneth Kusmer systematically surveys and analyzes the emergence of the ghetto in the city where, prior to 1870, blacks were ''almost equal'' to whites. This volume deals in a comprehensive way with more aspects of black life - economic, political, social, and cultural - than any previous study of an urban community and presents the most detailed analysis of black occupations available. It is also the first work to make extensive use of manuscript collections of local black leaders and organizations. Of particular value is the comparative framework of the study. Kusmer compares the position of blacks in the social order with that of immigrants and native whites and places the development of the ghetto within the context of urban history. In addition, by contrasting Cleveland with other major cities, such as New York, Chicago, and Boston, Kusmer shows that there were important differences among black communities, especially before 1915, and proves that the causes and effects of the emergence of black ghettos are more complex historical problems than previously recognized. The consolidation of Cleveland's ghetto took over fifty years, and it left the average black citizen more isolated from the general life of the urban community than ever before. Yet, ironically, Kusmer concludes, it was this very isolation, and the sense of unique goals and needs that it fostered, that helped unify the black citizenry and provided the practical basis for the future struggle against racism in all its manifestations.''Kenneth L. Kusmer has written the best book yet on the formation of a black urban ghetto. It stands as a tribute to the blend of urban and Afro-American history.''--Howard P. Chudacoff, American Historical Review ''What makes Kusmer stand out among books on blacks in the urban North is the breadth and sophistication with which he conceptualizes his study. . . . The grace and intelligence of Kusmer make his book the single best study of the shaping of modern black ghettos. . . . Should be greeted warmly by historians of blacks and of urban America.''--Nancy Weiss, Reviews in American History ''Drawing upon a variety of statistical and literary primary sources . . . Kusmer presents a richly documented case study. His felicitously lucid and comprehensive analysis of the growth of one black ghetto promises to provide a model for future historians of the second major chapter in the Afro-American experience. In my view, Kusmer's multifaceted historical analysis of black Cleveland represents the finest case study of an urban black community to appear in the past decade.''--Marion Kilson, Journal of Interdisciplinary History ''Instead of fixing upon the pathological aspects of the ghetto or the racial discriminations of the white majority he finds his unifying theme in the leadership and decision0making within the black community. This is a richly detailed and thoughtfully constructed book.''--Louis R. Harlan, Journal of American History

A study of African Americans in Ohio-notably, Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati. Giffin argues that the "color line" in Ohio hardened as the Great Migration gained force. His data shows, too, that the color line varied according to urban area, hardening progressively as one traveled South in the state.

This powerful and disturbing book clearly links persistent poverty among blacks in the United States to the unparalleled degree of deliberate segregation they experience in American cities. American Apartheid shows how the black ghetto was created by whites during the first half of the twentieth century in order to isolate growing urban black populations. It goes on to show that, despite the Fair Housing Act of 1968, segregation is perpetuated today through an interlocking set of individual actions, institutional practices, and governmental policies. In some urban areas the degree of black segregation is so intense and occurs in so many dimensions simultaneously that it amounts to “hypersegregation.” Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton demonstrate that this systematic segregation of African Americans leads inexorably to the creation of underclass communities during periods of economic downturn. Under conditions of extreme segregation, any increase in the overall rate of black poverty yields a marked increase in the geographic concentration of indigence and the deterioration of social and economic conditions in black communities. As ghetto residents adapt to this increasingly harsh environment under a climate of racial isolation, they evolve attitudes, behaviors, and practices that further marginalize their neighborhoods and undermine their chances of success in mainstream American society. This book is a sober challenge to those who argue that race is of declining significance in the United States today.

Other historians have tended to treat black urban life mainly in relation to the ghetto experience, but in Black Milwaukee, Joe William Trotter Jr. offers a new perspective that complements yet also goes well beyond that approach. The blacks in Black Milwaukee were not only ghetto dwellers; they were also industrial workers. The process by which they achieved this status is the subject of Trotter's ground-breaking study. This second edition features a new preface and acknowledgments, an essay on African American urban history since 1985, a prologue on the antebellum and Civil War roots of Milwaukee's black community, and an epilogue on the post-World War II years and the impact of deindustrialization, all by the author. Brief essays by four of Trotter's colleagues--William P. Jones, Earl Lewis, Alison Isenberg, and Kimberly L. Phillips--assess the impact of the original Black Milwaukee on the study of African American urban history over the past twenty years.

"Provides a rich prism through which to explore the social, economic, and political development of black Cincinnati. These studies offer insight into both the dynamics of racism and a community's changing responses to it." -- Peter Rachleff, author of Black Labor in Richmond

A leading historian offers a sweeping new account of the African American experience over four centuries Four great migrations defined the history of black people in America: the violent removal of Africans to the east coast of North America known as the Middle Passage; the relocation of one million slaves to the interior of the antebellum South; the movement of more than six million blacks to the industrial cities of the north and west a century later; and since the late 1960s, the arrival of black immigrants from Africa, the Caribbean, South America, and Europe. These epic migra­tions have made and remade African American life. Ira Berlin's magisterial new account of these passages evokes both the terrible price and the moving triumphs of a people forcibly and then willingly migrating to America. In effect, Berlin rewrites the master narrative of African America, challenging the traditional presentation of a linear path of progress. He finds instead a dynamic of change in which eras of deep rootedness alternate with eras of massive move­ment, tradition giving way to innovation. The culture of black America is constantly evolving, affected by (and affecting) places as far away from one another as Biloxi, Chicago, Kingston, and Lagos. Certain to gar­ner widespread media attention, The Making of African America is a bold new account of a long and crucial chapter of American history.

This work explores race relations in the city of San Francisco, where whites, for the most part, were outwardly civil to blacks, while denying them employment opportunities and political power. The author argues that it is essential to understand the nature of the racial caste system.

They advocated economic independence from whites and founded insurance companies that became some of the largest black-owned corporations.--L. Diane Barnes "Alabama Review"