Bronzeville

"Chicago was, notes Nicholas Lemann, "the capital of black America" in the 1940s, supplanting Harlem as the center of black culture and nationalist sentiment, home to such notables as Joe Lewis, Mahalia Jackson, Congressman William Dawson, Defender newspaper editor John Sengstacke, Ebony magazine publisher John H. Johnson, and Nation of Islam Leader Elijah Muhammad." "Bronzeville presents over 100 full-page black-and-white photographs of bustling city streets and sidewalks, prosperous middle-class businesses, thriving cabarets, and elegant churchgoers, as well as the mercilessly overcrowded "kitchenette" neighborhoods where dirt-poor migrants from the deep South struggled to survive. They capture the vitality of a city whose burgeoning black population produced a sophisticated culture that is now familiar worldwide. With an original essay on the migration and the photography project, and contemporary commentary by Richard Wright and others, here is a unique evocation of one of the defining moments in American cultural history."--BOOK JACKET.