Along the Streets of Bronzeville

Along the Streets of Bronzeville
Author: Elizabeth Schroeder Schlabach
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2012-09-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0252095103

Along the Streets of Bronzeville examines the flowering of African American creativity, activism, and scholarship in the South Side Chicago district known as Bronzeville during the period between the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s and the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s. Poverty stricken, segregated, and bursting at the seams with migrants, Bronzeville was the community that provided inspiration, training, and work for an entire generation of diversely talented African American authors and artists who came of age during the years between the two world wars. In this significant recovery project, Elizabeth Schroeder Schlabach investigates the institutions and streetscapes of Black Chicago that fueled an entire literary and artistic movement. She argues that African American authors and artists--such as Gwendolyn Brooks, Richard Wright, Langston Hughes, painter Archibald Motley, and many others--viewed and presented black reality from a specific geographic vantage point: the view along the streets of Bronzeville. Schlabach explores how the particular rhythms and scenes of daily life in Bronzeville locations, such as the State Street "Stroll" district or the bustling intersection of 47th Street and South Parkway, figured into the creative works and experiences of the artists and writers of the Black Chicago Renaissance. She also covers in detail the South Side Community Art Center and the South Side Writers' Group, two institutions of art and literature that engendered a unique aesthetic consciousness and political ideology for which the Black Chicago Renaissance would garner much fame. Life in Bronzeville also involved economic hardship and social injustice, themes that resonated throughout the flourishing arts scene. Schlabach explores Bronzeville's harsh living conditions, exemplified in the cramped one-bedroom kitchenette apartments that housed many of the migrants drawn to the city's promises of opportunity and freedom. Many struggled with the precariousness of urban life, and Schlabach shows how the once vibrant neighborhood eventually succumbed to the pressures of segregation and economic disparity. Providing a virtual tour South Side African American urban life at street level, Along the Streets of Bronzeville charts the complex interplay and intersection of race, geography, and cultural criticism during the Black Chicago Renaissance's rise and fall.

A Street in Bronzeville

A Street in Bronzeville
Author: Gwendolyn Brooks
Publisher: Library of America
Total Pages: 68
Release: 2014-10-07
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 1598533819

Gwendolyn Brooks was one of the most accomplished and acclaimed poets of the last century, the first black author to win the Pulitzer Prize and the first black woman to serve as poetry consultant to the Library of Congress—the forerunner of the U.S. Poet Laureate. Here, in an exclusive Library of America E-Book Classic edition, is her groundbreaking first book of poems, a searing portrait of Chicago’s South Side. “I wrote about what I saw and heard in the street,” she later said. “There was my material.”

Milwaukee's Bronzeville:

Milwaukee's Bronzeville:
Author: Paul H. Geenen
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Total Pages: 132
Release: 2012-09-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 1439633029

With the migration of African American sharecroppers to northern cities in the first half of the 20th century, the African American population of Milwaukee grew from fewer than 1,000 in 1900 to nearly 22,000 by 1950. Most settled around a 12-block area along Walnut Street that came to be known as Milwaukee's Bronzeville, a thriving residential, business, and entertainment community. Barbershops, restaurants, drugstores, and funeral homes were started with a little money saved from overtime pay at factory jobs or extra domestic work taken on by the women. Exotic nightclubs, taverns, and restaurants attracted a racially mixed clientele, and daytime social clubs sponsored "matinees" that were dress-up events featuring local bands catering to neighborhood residents. Bronzeville is remembered by African American elders as a good place to grow up--times were hard, but the community was tight.

Bronzeville Boys and Girls

Bronzeville Boys and Girls
Author: Gwendolyn Brooks
Publisher:
Total Pages: 48
Release: 2015-03-20
Genre:
ISBN: 9781484447703

A collection of illustrated poems that reflects the experiences and feelings of African American children living in big cities.

Three Girls from Bronzeville

Three Girls from Bronzeville
Author: Dawn Turner
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2022-06-07
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1982107715

"The three girls formed an indelible bond: roaming their community in search of hidden treasures for their 'Thing Finder box,' and hiding under the dining room table, eavesdropping as three generations of relatives gossiped and played the numbers. The girls spent countless afternoons together, ice skating in the nearby Lake Meadows apartment complex, swimming in the pool at the Ida B. Wells housing project, and daydreaming of their futures: Dawn a writer, Debra a doctor, Kim a teacher. Then they came to a precipice, a fraught rite of passage for all girls when the dangers and the harsh realities of the world burst the innocent bubble of childhood, when the choices they made could--and would--have devastating consequences. There was a razor thin margin of error--especially for brown girls"

Bronzeville Nights

Bronzeville Nights
Author: Steven C. Dubin
Publisher: Cityfiles Press
Total Pages: 96
Release: 2021-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781733869027

A dazzling and surprising visual visit to Bronzeville, Chicago's vibrant African-American community, during the segregated 1940s and 1950s.

Jim Crow Nostalgia

Jim Crow Nostalgia
Author: Michelle R. Boyd
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
Total Pages: 247
Release: 2008
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0816646775

An incisive examination of how black leaders reinvented the history of Chicago's Bronzeville neighborhood in ways that sanitized the brutal elements of life under Jim Crow develops a new way to understand the political significance of race today. Simultaneous.

The Essential Gwendolyn Brooks

The Essential Gwendolyn Brooks
Author: Gwendolyn Brooks
Publisher: American Poets Project
Total Pages: 184
Release: 2005-11-17
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

Presents more than eighty poems spanning the career of twentieth-century African-American poet Gwendolyn Brooks, which explore life on Chicago's south side.

Wild Hundreds

Wild Hundreds
Author: Nate A. Marshall
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Total Pages: 89
Release: 2015-09-09
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 0822981084

Wild Hundreds is a long love song to Chicago. The book celebrates the people, culture, and places often left out of the civic discourse and the travel guides. Wild Hundreds is a book that displays the beauty of black survival and mourns the tragedy of black death.

The South Side

The South Side
Author: Natalie Y. Moore
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2016-03-22
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1137280158

A lyrical, intelligent, authentic and necessary look at the intersection of race and class in Chicago, a Great American City.Mayors Richard M. Daley and Rahm Emanuel have touted Chicago as a "world-class city." The skyscrapers kissing the clouds, the billion-dollar Millennium Park, Michelin-rated restaurants, pristine lake views, fabulous shopping, vibrant theater scene, downtown flower beds and stellar architecture tell one story. Yet swept under the rug is another story: the stench of segregation that permeates and compromises Chicago. Though other cities - including Cleveland, Los Angeles, and Baltimore - can fight over that mantle, it's clear that segregation defines Chicago. And unlike many other major U.S. cities, no particular race dominates; Chicago is divided equally into black, white and Latino, each group clustered in its various turfs.In this intelligent and highly important narrative, Chicago native Natalie Moore shines a light on contemporary segregation in the city's South Side; her reported essays showcase the lives of these communities through the stories of her family and the people who reside there. The South Side highlights the impact of Chicago's historic segregation - and the ongoing policies that keep the system intact.