Anonymous
Posted December 3, 2006
This is an excellent book about Chicago and the blacks that reside there. Many of the stories seemed to contain similar experiences that other blacks who migrated to large cities encountered. It makes you wish you were able to go back in time and have the same wonderful experiences...and also helps you to learn how the blacks dealt with issues of limited/overcrowded housing, competition for limited jobs and racism. We have come a long way.
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Posted August 19, 2005
What a gift this collection is! In 1988, Timuel Black began to record and preserve the recollections of people who had lived in Chicago a long time, particularly the first generation of the Great Migration. When he wrote the introduction to this book, he had recorded over 125 conversations and still had ¿many , many more people with whom I would like to speak.¿ Thirty-six of those conversations are presented here, with two more volumes planned to follow. The interviews are conducted using the ¿participant observer¿ technique, and since Dr. Black - a long time resident himself - is an ¿insider¿ these interviews are essentially honest, intimate conversations among old friends, many of whom have now passed. As Dr. Black makes clear, this book is not intended to be a history of Black Chicago and its institutions, but rather a collection of oral memories from people who participated in shaping those institutions. But his field work provides invaluable data for future researchers attempting to compile that history. If this book contained nothing more than the biographical information about each of the 40 participants (some are joint interviews), it would make fascinating reading. But the interviews bring each vividly to life. We meet people from all walks, including civil servants, educators, politicians, jazz musicians, railroad workers, business people, even two generations of South Side Chicago represented by mother and daughter Mildred Bowden and Hermene Hartman. Some, like George Johnson, tell a story of ¿from rags to riches.¿ Others fall into a category of ¿just keep on keepin¿ on.¿ But all are riveting. I look forward to the next two volumes!
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More About This Textbook
Overview
Winner of 2006 Jewish Council on Urban Affairs Courageous Voices Award
Recipient of 2007 The Hyde Park Historical Society Paul Cornell Award
A collection of interviews with African Americans who came to Chicago from the South.
In their first great migration to Chicago that began during World War I, African Americans came from the South seeking a better life--and fleeing a Jim Crow system of racial prejudice, discrimination, and segregation. What they found was much less than what they'd hoped for, but it was much better than what they'd come from--and in the process they set in motion vast changes not only in Chicago but also in the whole fabric of American society. This book, the first of three volumes, revisits this momentous chapter in American history with those who lived it.
Oral history of the first order, Bridges of Memory lets us hear the voices of those who left social, political, and economic oppression for political freedom and opportunity such as they'd never known--and for new forms of prejudice and segregation. These children and grandchildren of ex-slaves found work in the stockyards and steel mills of Chicago, settled and started small businesses in the "Black Belt" on the South Side, and brought forth the jazz, blues, and gospel music that the city is now known for. Historian Timuel D. Black, Jr., himself the son of first-generation migrants to Chicago, interviews a wide cross-section of African Americans whose remarks and reflections touch on issues ranging from fascism to Jim Crow segregation to the origin of the blues. Their recollections comprise a vivid record of a neighborhood, a city, a society, and a people undergoing dramatic and unprecedented changes.
Editorial Reviews
From the Publisher
"Black has produced compelling oral history certain to stand alongside classics on black Chicago that start with St. Clair Drake and Horace Clayton's Black Metropolis."
--Library Journal
"[E]ven the casual reader. . .will delight in this invaluable resource."--Publishers Weekly
"These interviews provide a lens into the choices, disappointments, work, family, cultural community and race relations that shaped the lives of Black Chicagoans during the age of the Great Migration. The history of Chicago has been made richer and more accessible by Black's work." --Lonnie Bunch, president of the Chicago Historical Society
Product Details
Meet the Author
Timuel D. Black, Jr. is a prominent civil rights activist, noted jazz historian, and professor emeritus of social sciences at the City Colleges of Chicago. Born in Birmingham, Alabama, he moved to Chicago as a baby, and has lived here since. He holds a B.A. from Roosevelt University and a master's degree from the University of Chicago.