African American Urban Sociology and Black Metropolis by Drake and Cayton in 1945

St. Clair Drake Horace Cayton

First Edition

Drake, St. Clair, and Horace R. Cayton, Black Metropolis, 1945, documents the social, economic, and racial systems that shaped Black life on Chicago’s South Side from the nineteenth century through the interwar period. The book identifies Black urban community formation through housing, labor, class structure, migration, business, politics, and institutional life, revealing how segregation and Black self-organization operated in practice and providing primary-source evidence for the study of African American urban history, sociology, and race relations. Based on research conducted with Works Progress Administration field workers in the late 1930s, the study remains a landmark account of Black Chicago.

Drake, St. Clair, and Horace R. Cayton. Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1945. First edition. 809 pages. Introduction by Richard Wright. Binding not specified. 8vo, measuring approximately 8.5 x 6 inches. The volume examines African American settlement and community structure in Chicago, with attention to the South Side as a major Black urban enclave of professionals, business owners, workers, religious institutions, press networks, and political organizations. Richard Wright’s introduction describes the work as “a scientific report upon the state of unrest, longing, [and] hope among urban Negroes.”

Published during the final year of World War II, Black Metropolis gave scholarly form to the study of northern Black urban life before the postwar civil-rights campaigns transformed national politics. Its analysis of segregated housing, employment barriers, migration, and community institutions supports research into the Great Migration, Black Chicago, and the emergence of urban sociology as a tool for interpreting racial inequality. Very good condition. A major first-edition study of African American urban life and the systems that structured Black experience in twentieth-century Chicago.

Item #18818

Price: $450.00