Black Metropolis

The African-American sociologists St. Clair Drake and Horace R. Cayton take us on a journey through the neighbourhoods of Black Metropolis, the largest black metropolis in the United States after Harlem, in the heart of Chicago, and reveal both the obverse and the reverse. An overcrowded black ghetto, the result of the practice of ‘restrictive covenants’ preventing mixed residential development; but also a city within a city, where numerous institutions, an intense social, cultural and religious life, schools, an influential press and a thriving formal and informal economy have developed - earning its inhabitants the nickname Bronzeville.

Black Metropolis. A city within a city. Chicago 1914-1945 describes the uniqueness of this urban minority and highlights racial discrimination, but also reveals how African-Americans constantly fought against it throughout the city's history, building a capacity for collective and individual action to win their rights and their place in American society. This book, the fruit of a vast collective investigation carried out during the New Deal period, has become a benchmark for the study of urban social problems and has helped to found Black Studies in American universities.

Richard Wright, the most famous African-American writer of the time, wrote the preface, in keeping with the literary character of this exceptional monograph, which is capable of both moving and provoking thought on these crucial subjects where race, class and gender come together.

To be published on 26 September 2024