Review by Choice Review
Garb (Washington Univ., St. Louis) displays the significance of the African American vote and forms of political pressure in a post-Civil War northern city. Stories of individual achievement reveal how blacks divided by political tactics and party positively affected their collective standing by electing black politicians to several high-level local, state, and federal offices. Focused largely on the elite and the franchised, Garb also includes those who became leaders in labor unions and women in social organizations. Chicago's early-20th-century black population of less than 5 percent had an impact on the early civil rights movement beyond what mere numbers might suggest. Public historian Helgeson (Texas State Univ., San Marcos) centers on community building by housewives, clerics, tradesmen, social workers, academics, personnel managers, and journalists in the Windy City in a later half century (roughly from the 1930s through the 1980s). Community organizing and social networking eventuated in entry into, and at times the overthrow of, the local Democratic political machine. Garb ends with the Great Migration from 1910 to 1930; Helgeson commences with that population and looks at the influences of the Second Great Migration from approximately 1935 to 1965. Helgeson emphasizes that black Chicagoans devised a powerful political culture in a city that he states had become one of the most segregated in the country. Black reform politics gained important allies and successfully grew beyond distinct neighborhoods. Helgeson discusses the philosophical differences and tensions between what he describes as pragmatic black liberalism (succeeding within the system) and radicalism (upending exclusionary structures) in an interdisciplinary work utilizing the ideas of social scientists, novels, and radio scripts; Garb's presentation is less theoretical. Both books provide valuable views of the changing African American political presence in a city with national and international importance. --Frederick J. Augustyn, Library of Congress
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
