Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City PDF
Preview Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City
BLACK METROPOLIS: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City/Volume Ili 4 HARPER TORCHBOOKS * THE ACADEMY LIBRARY BLACK METROPOLIS A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City St. Clair Drake and Horace R. Cayton Volume II An Authors' Preface, a new chapter, "Bronzeville 1961," and "Sugges- tions for Collateral Reading, 1962," have been added to this volume. HARPER & ROW, PUBLISHERS e NEW YORK AND EVANSTON HARPER TORCHBOOKS $ THE ACADEMY LIBRARY Advisory Editor in the Humanities and the Social Sciences: Benjamin Nelson BLACK METROPOLIS. Revised and enlarged edition. Copyright, 1945, by St. Clair Drake and Horace R. Cayton. New material copyright e z962 by St. Clair Drake and Horace R. Cayton. Printed in the United States of America. The first edition of this book was published in one volume by Harcourt, Brace and Company in 1945. The authors have added to the Torchbook edition: to Volume I, an Appendix, "Black Metropolis 1961"; to Volume II, an Authors' Preface, a new chapter, "Bronzeville I96I," and "Suggestions for Collateral Reading, 1962." In addition, two new graphs and three new maps have been prepared for the Appendix to Volume I. First HARPER TORCHBOOK edition published 1962 by Harper & Row, Publishers, Incorporated New York and Evanston Contents VOLUMIEI AuthPorresf'a ce lX PARITI I 14B.ronzeville 397 15T.hPeo woePfrr easnPsdu lpit 398 16N.egBruos iMnyetsahsn F:da ct 4°3 17.BusiUnnedseCsrl oau d 47° 18T.hMee asouftr hMeea n 495 19S.tyolLfei vingC-lUapspser 526 LowCelra Sseasxn: Fd a mily 564 20. 21T.hWeo roltfdh L eo wCelra ss 600 22T.hMei ddlWea-oycLf li afses 23A.dvantchRiean cge PARITV 24O.fT hitnCogo sm e 755 Bronz1e9v6i1lle xv AM ethodNolootbgeyWi LclaolWy adr ner 769 NotesD oacnudm entation 783 AL iosSfte leBcotoDeke.lsa lwiinttghhA e m erNiecgarno 793 SuggefsoCtroi lolnRaset aedr1ia9nl6g 2, 797 Index 799 V List of Tables VOLUME II 14. Proportion of Space on the Front Page of the Chicago De- fender Allotted to Specific Categories of News: 1926-1937, Inclusive 402 15. The Ten Persons Receiving the Most Prominent Front-Page Display in the Chicago Defender: 1933-1938, Inclusive 403 x6. Principal and Secondary Banner Headlines in the Chicago Defender: Nov. 13, 1943, to March 25, 1944, Inclusive 4o8 17. Negro Religious Congregations in Chicago: 1928 and 1938 414 x8. Relationship Between Growth of Total Negro Population and Total Negro Business: 186o-i937 434 19. The Ten Most Numerous Types of Negro-Owned Businesses in Chicago: 1938 438 20. Distribution of Negro and White Retail Stores by Desirability of Business Sites: 1938 449 21. Number of Businesses Operated by Negro and White Pro- prietors on th Street, Between State Street and Cottage 47 Grove: 1938 450-51 22. Financial Analysis of Three Policy Companies for One Week: 1938 479 23. Employees and Estimated Wages in Policy Racket for One Week: 1938 480 24. Percentage Distribution of Family Income in Chicago, 1935-36 513 25. Median Incomes of Northern Urban Male Negro College Graduates 529 26. Percentage Distribution of Churches by Denomination and Type of Neighborhood: 1938 614 27. Attitudes Expressed Toward "Jack-Leg" Preachers, by Status of Informants: 1938 62o vii LIST OF TABLES 28. Percentage Distribution of Negro Churches by Type of Building and Denomination: 1938 633 29. Comparison of Selected Social Data for Areas Within Black Belt: 1934-1940 659 30. Comparison of Occupational Status of Heads of 2,141 Negro Families in Two Negro Housing Projects: I941 661 31. Selected Opinions on Matters of Faith and Church Procedure of 51 Negro Pastors: 1935 68o 32. Correlation Between Incidence of Social Club Participation and Selected Social Factors 702 33. Social Characteristics of x33 Members of 13 Typical Adult Female Social Clubs 704 List of Maps, Charts and Graphs VOLUME II 22. Ecological Areas Within the Negro Community 384 23. Front Page of Chicago Defender, January ], 1944 405 24. Front Page of Chicago Defender, November 18, x944 407 25. Where the Church Dollar Goes 421 26. Rate of Growth of Negro Population and Negro Business 435 27. Policy "Drawings" 471 28. The "Policy Racket" 483 29. Comparison of the Negro and White Occupational Structure: 1930 507 30. The Negro Class Structure 522 3!. The System of Social Classes 52.5 32. The World of the Lower Class 6ox 33. Distribution of Selected Class Indices 604 34. Distribution of Selected Class Indices (Cont.) 605 35. Distribution of Churches by Desirability of Neighborhood 64 36. Distribution of Store-Front Churches 635 37. Community Areas and Census Tracts 658 38. Extent of Social Club Participation 703 39. The Strength of Class Controls 711 Authors' Preface to the Torchbook Edition WHEN RICHARD WRIGHT WROTE THE INTRODUCTION TO THE FIRST EDITION of Black Metropolis (see Volume I of the Torchbook edition), he was America's best-known Negro novelist and his most widely read work, Native Son, had Chicago as its locale. As Wright phrased it, "I, in com- mon with the authors . . . feel personally identified with the material in this book." Wright began his essay with a competent and occasionally poetic resume of the contributions which history and social science had made to an understanding of Western man's "alienation" and the Negro's "degradation." As the essay develops, a passionate cry emerges from the heart of the man who came to Chicago as "Black Boy"-an angry and pessimistic critique of American culture pouring from the lips of a "Native Son." Here is Richard Wright at his provocative and chal- lenging best, deliberately picking the words he knows will hurt and propounding ideas certain to shock his readers, while taking full ad- vantage of the artist's prerogative to overstate his case. He was, un- doubtedly, deriving immense satisfaction from wielding the verbal sledge-hammer and twisting the literary stiletto. He was, as all of us were in the last days of World War II, carrying a board-size chip on his shoulder and asking the question, "Have we been fighting once again for everybody else's freedom except our own?" The authors tried to discipline their feelings as they wrote (without total success, as the reader will observe). Richard Wright, as an artist, was under no such role-bound obligation and his essay pulled no punches. Wright was always driven by a desire to escape from the limitations which systems of race prejudice and discrimination had imposed upon him. First, he made the "Flight to Freedom" from Mississippi to Chicago. Then he sought the more cosmopolitan atmosphere of New York City. During the Depression the Communist Party offered the only milieu in which ordinary Negroes could find some measure of social equality as well as a group of white people who were challeng- ix X BLACK METROPOLIS ing the whole system of segregation and discrimination in the Deep South. Richard Wright joined the Party but left in disgust during the Second World War because he felt that it was trying to curb his spontaneity and intellectual freedom, and was asking Negroes to be less militant. Black Metropolis was written during the period of Wright's attempt to find a satisfying existence in New York. But the racism he sought to avoid pursued him even into Greenwich Village, where he had purchased a home. So he shook the dust of America from his feet and sailed to Paris, where he lived until his death in i96o. The essay in this book was written after he had broken with the Communist Party and just before he became an expatriate. Richard Wright was not only fleeing American race prejudice when he exiled himself to Paris. He was also rejecting life in Chicago's "Bronzeville"-the Negro community described in this volume-and in all the other Bronzevilles of America. This rejection is implicit in much of what he has to say in the essay. For him, all of the segregated Negro communities were intellectually sterile ghettos into which Negroes had been driven by social forces beyond their control, and which incorporated, in exaggerated form, what Wright considered some of the worst facets of American life: conspicuous consumption, pursuit of the products of a mass culture, devotion to frivolous triviali- ties, and a plethora of escapist religion. Richard Wright made no pretense of being detached or even tolerant about the way of life in Bronzeville. He left that to the authors, who were trying to combine the roles of "Negro," which society imposed upon them, and social scientist, which they themselves had chosen.' The "World of the Lower Class," as described in Chapters 21 and 22, was to Wright a morass from which he had extricated himself as a youth, and whose victims he had once summoned to destroy the con- ditions of their existence by helping to bring about the proletarian revolution. For him, the "Middle-class Way of Life" had a stultifying quality that the artist could not accept. The "Upper-class Way of Life," from which he had been barred originally by lack of a conventional education, he later rejected with scorn when its practitioners tried to make a Race Hero of him after his success as a novelist. In his view, 1 See E. Franklin Frazier's Black Bourgeoisie, for an example of the work of a distinguished Negro sociologist who steps out of his professional role in order to make evaluations similar to those of Richard Wright. His earlier works on the Negro family were non-normative.
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