Joe William Trotter, Jr., a leading authority on African American urban history, has synthesized the secondary literature to produce a broad overview of the topic. He organizes the book by region and in a roughly chronological sequence, beginning with slavery in the deep South (New Orleans, Charleston, Savannah), proceeding to cover the Upper South (Baltimore, Richmond, Washington D.C.), the New South (Birmingham, Atlanta, Durham), the “edges” of the South (Tulsa, Houston, Miami), the Northeast (Philadelphia, Boston, New York), the industrial Midwest (Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati), and the Far West (Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, Seattle). He concludes with an assessment of the federal HOPE VI public housing reforms, gentrification displacements, and black suburbanization.
Trotter balances the achievements of blacks in the face of harsh white racism while demonstrating how blacks resisted and, ultimately succeeded in “building the black city” through efforts at gaining property (as owners or renters),...
University of California Press