Black History Month: Obama’s Speech and Books About Chicago.

President Obama spoke to the nation last night. Here are some high-quality books about black Chicago, his political home.

 Last night, President Barack Obama addressed a joint session of Congress for the first time.  Standing where presidents before him have stood for centuries, he assured the American people that, despite the current economic crisis, the nation will “emerge stronger than before.”

As has been well-chronicled, Obama’s political roots, his wife Michelle,and much of his cabinet are all from Chicago.  

Carl Sandburg’s City of Big Shoulders has been the backdrop for many fine books by and about black people.  Here are some of the best (My only caveat is that I will not write about books I have already posted on like Mary Pattillo’s Black on the Block, Studs Terkel’s Race, and James Ralph’s Northern Protest):

1. Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City, by St. Clair Drake and Horace Cayton.  Funded by money from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal, this massive tome by two acclaimed sociologists remains a landmark in the discipline and in its description of how Chicago’s black community formed and was maintained.   It may be hard to remember what a radical act choosing a black neighborhood, the historic Bronzeville district, as a legitmate subject of scholarly inquiry was at the time: Drake and Cayton built from this base to create a masterwork that still speaks to us today. 

2. There Are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in the Other America, byAlex Kotlowitz.  I had the great fortune to take a class with Kotlowitz while studying journalism at Northwestern University; the experience gave me a renewed appreciation of the care he gives to each sentence in his work.  This story of two brothers and their mother at the Henry Horner Homes is chockfull of poignant detail.  Kotlowitz’s moral outrage at the conditions in which these and thousands of other families lived throughout the city are the backbone of this compelling work.

3. Native Son, by Richard Wright.  Set on Chicago’s South Side, this tale of 20-year-old Bigger Thomas’ lofty dreams, murder of a young white woman and involvement with Communist Party members committed to his defense is utterly gripping.  Wright’s indictment through Bigger and his initially dim, and ultimately doomed, life prospects is vividly rendered.

4. A Raisin In the Sun, by Lorraine Hansberry.  Drawing its title from a Langston Hughes poem, this play tells the story of the Younger’s family’s efforts to leave their dingy apartment and depressing neighborhood and move to a home in a white community moves, inspires and shames at the same time.  Hansberry’s dialogue, the shifts in action and tone, moments of humor and Walter’s gradual emergence into manhood despite white opposition to the move all sweep the viewer away.

5.Making the Second Ghetto: Chicago, Race and Housing, 1940-1960, by Arnold Hirsch.  This book can provide a deeper appreciation of the Youngers’ context if read in conjunction with A Raisin In the Sun.  Hirsch shows how the city’s elite and residents worked together when the U.S. Supreme Court case Shelley v. Kramer declared the enforcement of racial restrictive covenants unconstitutional.  Neighborhood responses varied from outright hostility and violence in neighborhoods like Englewood, to, in one of the most interesting chapters, Hyde Park and Kenwood’s establishment of a commission to “manage” integration so that black people would feel welcomed even as their numbers would remain somewhat limited. 

6. A Fire on the Prairie, by Gary Rivlin.  Former 43rd Ward Alderman Martin Oberman’s objections notwithstanding, this is the definitive account of Harold Washington’s groundbreaking mayoral victory in 1983-a victory that was spearheaded in part by Obama strategist David Axelrod.  A former writer for the Chicago Reader, Rivlin blends a keen eye for detail with his obvious political sympathies to create what some Australians call “a cracking yarn.”

7. The Man Who Beat Clout City, by Robert McClory.  Former priest and South Boulevard neighbor Bob McClory tells the story of Renault Robinson, a young black policeman who endures all kinds of abuse on his way to forming the Afro-American Patrolmen’s League.  I will devote an entire post to this book before month’s end, and wanted to mention it here as an engaging, informative and well-written read.