INTRODUCTION

In 1954, George Johnson left a sales job to start a hair-care products company with his wife, Joan. The Johnsons made quality hair-relaxer creams, but as an African American couple in Chicago, they could not land financing from white banks to produce and market their brands. After a loan officer told him their idea was “ridiculous,” George fibbed to receive his initial funding. He went to another branch of the same firm and received $250 for a “family vacation.” In the following years, the business flourished but banks still denied the Johnsons loans. Despite the impediments, they distributed their merchandise through beauty shops and customers snapped it up. By 1960, sales ran at $425,000 a year.¹

The proceeds propelled the Johnsons to relocate to Chatham, a prestigious neighborhood on the city’s South Side that saw an influx of African Americans in the late 1950s. The community had long been an area where European Americans assimilated into the white middle class, but most residents could not imagine black Americans as part of this process. Despite some sincere efforts at welcoming the newcomers, panic-stricken whites usually sold their homes and left. One casualty was the local Chatham Bank, where Johnson Products had substantial sums deposited. On August 22, 1963, the bank closed its doors and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation liquidated it, citing financial malfeasance by controlling stockholders.²

For black residents of Chatham, the bank’s closure seemed like the final, crippling act of animosity by retreating whites. “I recognized that this was really going to be a terrible blot on the entire community,” Johnson recalled. “A bank is the business center of any community, and when a bank goes under, then people begin to leave, and the community starts to go down and fall apart.”³ Johnson, mindful of his previous disappointments in securing credit, collaborated with seven other businessmen to start a new bank in the same location. Independence Bank rose from the ashes as the first black-owned bank to open its doors in Chicago since the Great Depression.⁴ After weathering early challenges, Independence Bank became the country’s largest black-owned bank, and Johnson Products emerged as the first company headed by African Americans to be listed on the American Stock Exchange.⁵ Through their tenacity and resourcefulness, the black middle class rallied to save an entire community from falling victim to neglect and disinvestment.

The Johnsons’ story illustrates the main themes of this book. The twentieth century produced unprecedented socioeconomic mobility for large numbers of Americans. As the writer Nelson Algren remarked, Chicago was a “city on the make,” filled with dreamers and schemers.⁶ While black Chicagoans engaged in collective workplace, community, and political struggles, they also used individualistic means to secure the American Dream. The Johnsons became affluent but struggled to earn access to the mainstream. They made products serving the black market, lived in a segregated area, and helped form a bank mainly for black customers. Like many African Americans that obtained prosperity, they did so on a different track, and only after overcoming hurdles placed by obstinate whites.

Moving Up, Moving Out presents the damage racism and discrimination exacted on black Chicagoans and their communities while accentuating the resilience, struggles, and the often-compromised positions of upwardly mobile African Americans. Many historians have wondered why African Americans, as their hopes for the Great Migration dimmed in Northern ghettoes, did not turn to more radical means. Indeed, African American activists and intellectuals offered a host of alternative routes to empowerment, including nationalism, communism, social democracy, and community-based political liberalism.⁷ These movements all had a deep impact but the pull of economic climbing within the system held strong, despite its flaws and hypocrisies, especially when African Americans could point to people who had made it against the odds. Black middle-class sensibilities were shaped by their individual and collective encounters with discrimination, structural disparities in housing and employment, and critiques from within the race.

Class is a relationship, and historians often discuss the black middle class in terms of its relations with the masses, critiquing it for what members did or did not do to the “uplift” the race. Some scholars credit their egalitarian efforts to reach down and assist with political mobilization, civil rights activities, and “giving back.”⁸ Indeed, the middle class often forthrightly believed they were setting the best example for other African Americans and saw themselves as envoys to the white establishment. They took on leading roles in the freedom struggle, particularly when the objectives served their interests. The black masses regularly looked to elites for leadership and inspiration and hoped that their accomplishments would change white attitudes in regard to race, citizenship, and integration.⁹ Critics, however, faulted the middle class as rootless, powerless, and lacking awareness of their social responsibilities.¹⁰ They charged that they were far too comfortable in their cramped political and economic realms and used the poor as a dependent power base in a system of clientage exchange.¹¹ As they moved up, detractors argued that they abandoned the community and left these “clients” to fend for themselves.¹²

There are many paths to resistance, though, and black strivers should be examined on their own terms.¹³ Many were focused on personal achievement, a motivation that did not necessarily exclude other pursuits, including racial uplift. As the book details, the black middle class expressed more concern and did far more for the less fortunate than its white counterpart. Yet as Kevin Gaines notes, uplift was not an “independent black perspective”; rather, it was formed by prevailing cultural currents and power structures. The contradictions between uplift ideals tied to personal ambitions and the stifling reality of discrimination made uplift ideology a “faulty construction” unsuited to meet the enormous challenges posed by white supremacy.¹⁴ The elite and middle class often internalized the “lift as we climb” ideology, but they did so under heavy pressures to discipline and pacify the supposedly unruly members of the race. When scholars and intellectuals hold the black middle class to these standards for progressive, radical, or conservative ends, they feed white hopes for racial peace on-the-cheap.¹⁵

Though it was the land of hope, African Americans faced systemic encumbrances in the urban North. The black middle class developed not only in terms of its relationship to poor and working-class African Americans, but by overcoming a white superstructure that usually opposed its aims. African Americans came to Chicago in large numbers beginning in the mid-1910s as conditions worsened in the Jim Crow South. Chicago’s bustling, diverse economy and political freedoms made it the Midwestern city that seemed to offer the best chances for migrants. Drawing mainly from the states with train routes to the city—Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Tennessee—by the late 1910s the South Side rivaled Harlem as the capital of the “New Negroes.” Blacks from peasant-style conditions in the South arrived and saw what the New Orleans–born and –bred Mahalia Jackson called a “Negro city” with black police and firefighters, black professionals, and a brawny political submachine. “Never before had Negroes lived so well or had so much money to spend,” she recalled.¹⁶

African Americans like Jackson who came to Chicago arrived under conditions that should have led to easy assimilation. Modest numbers settled early in the city’s development, their population underwent gradual growth, and they were mainly native-born, English-speaking Protestants. However, the factor that proved to matter most was the color of their skin, relegating them to segregated living conditions and closing them off from the majority of economic opportunities.¹⁷ Chicago’s rigid boundaries paved the way for the American-style apartheid in a dual housing market, as whites could live wherever they could afford, while placing restrictions on freedom of movement for African Americans. Whites used racial covenants and violence to sequester blacks to a narrow strip of territory running down the city’s South Side and a limited area on the West Side. While the city excited her, Jackson also noted that her domain was limited, and “you could go for miles and miles without seeing a white person.”¹⁸ This provided blacks with a sense of ease—they did not have to bother with whites. As they soon learned, though, Chicago constricted their ambitions. Blacks expanded this living space block by block, but their neighborhoods were beset by overcrowding and substandard conditions that worsened over the twentieth century as jobs and capital left.¹⁹ Most disturbingly, the city was routinely ripped apart by a series of ugly, violent ordeals that ranged from all-out riots to small-scale disturbances. In nearly all these cases, white elites leaned heavily on the black middle class to pull Chicago back from the brink. They complied by not giving up on the city, but also adeptly used their elevated positions to negotiate advancement for themselves, while usually hoping that these personal steps forward would also improve the lot of the race.

Though racism was the root cause of most of these conflagrations, African Americans’ consistent contestation of the city’s color lines sparked them through the defiant belief that whites possessed no monopoly on the good life. African Americans joined in movements that pushed for broad gains. The vehicles for change included unions, civil rights groups, political parties, and community organizations.²⁰ While those actions have been well covered by scholars, this book concentrates on the impacts of individual strivings. As historian Michele Mitchell finds, members of the “aspiring class” that emerged during Reconstruction had a major effect on the black mind-set. They concentrated on hard work and economic advancement as the keys to progress.²¹ Racial barriers severely hampered this mobility, but by the late 1910s certain blacks attained advantages in income, education, and status. The migration boosted prospects, and in cities such as Chicago, the aspiring class sought personal gains while endeavoring to distinguish and distance themselves from poor African Americans. Discrimination undoubtedly changed the meanings of “middle class” for these African Americans. Unlike European ethnics, who could change their names and “whiten” their résumés to blend into the middle class, discrimination barred blacks from achieving skilled work, foremen jobs, white-collar posts, and many professional positions. In this situation, higher-status blacks often distinguished themselves through cultural standards such as respectability, behavior, and dress. As the Black Metropolis expanded, money eclipsed these yardsticks as the primary defining characteristic of middle-class life, particularly as they used this wealth to move out into desirable areas. Unlike their white peers, though, they continued to wrestle with their responsibilities to the entire race. The black middle class, W. E. B. Du Bois noted in 1947, had long been torn by the dilemma as to whether its strivings should strengthen racial solidarity and the push against the caste system, or if it should “seek escape” through assimilation.²²

This study details how class differences bared fissures in the black community and produced quandaries for black Chicagoans interested in racial welfare but concurrently trying to make personal gains. The affluent emerged as community leaders, but despite calls for uplift, they could not substantially change the fortunes of the poor and working class. As Preston Smith notes, they were not Chicago’s structural architects, but their insistence that their own achievements were evidence of societal headway helped legitimize discriminatory capitalism.²³ Yet they were not social democrats and cared little for alternative forms of organizing society. They were individualists within a segregated milieu and did much to shape their circumstances. Shut out of many mainstream pursuits, black strivers creatively fashioned white-collar positions in the first half of the twentieth century. Instead of acceding to residential containment, these pioneers set about breaking through into areas befitting their attainments. While they often pursued integration with enlightened whites, when these hopes faded, they set out forming and protecting middle-class enclaves. As the civil rights movement began to pay dividends in the 1960s and 1970s, they initiated integration into often-hostile corporate workplaces. Through their personal experiences, the black middle class encountered the full wrath of racism firsthand. They pressed forward, though, hoping to simultaneously open opportunities for African Americans willing to follow their path. Black strivers were not egalitarians and did not think they were bound to take on extra responsibilities if they interfered with individual rewards. They knew that American society had produced these inequalities, and it was unjust and impractical for the black middle class to fix them.

The chapters that follow focus on the sites where Chicago’s African Americans forged a middle class. Chapter 1 details the experiences of the thousands of African Americans who journeyed to Chicago in the 1910s and 1920s, seeking refuge from Southern atrocities and pursuing the “Promised Land.” The migration included scores of ambitious, talented, and credentialed newcomers prepared to make a rapid ascent. Yet unlike Europeans, who found grudging acceptance, white gatekeepers nearly completely disqualified blacks from consideration. In response, black Chicagoans set up a “Black Metropolis” through entrepreneurship and careers in black-owned businesses.²⁴ Though African Americans created a vibrant city-within-a-city, small businesses could not satisfy the employment needs of black Chicagoans. Stymied by racism, African Americans developed alternative ways to make a living through formal and informal aspects of the economy such as real estate speculation, storefront preaching, and gambling operations. These pursuits attracted the go-getting while generating controversy within the community. Black Chicagoans often viewed the successful as victims of a system that capped their advancement, heroes pressing to make gains for the race, and exploiters of fellow blacks. That these three descriptions could exist concurrently illuminated Chicago’s racialized political economy. The accomplishments of African Americans in unconventional fields also showed the hypocrisy of a society that claimed to value skill and aspiration while severely constraining black Chicagoans’ chances, engendering a warily cynical black version of the American Dream.

Chapter 2 details the wretched housing conditions for blacks in the Windy City during the period of the First Great Migration. This abject situation is well-covered historical territory, but few scholars have examined extraordinary measures taken by African Americans to find suitable living spaces and break down residential boundaries.²⁵ For African Americans, upgrading housing was a tortuous process. Though clashes over territory included friction and brutal incidents between European groups, by the late 1910s borders were most pronounced along black/white lines. African Americans pushed through these obstacles, simultaneously rallying racial pride while revealing class tensions. The prosperous took particular umbrage at the indiscriminate mixing of people in their neighborhoods as they watched successful white-ethnics move out of slums and blend into the middle class. Yet many also understood that moving out was not an act of snobbery, but a necessary tactic to create space for a home-starved people, and pioneers made steady expansions by pressing into self-styled “white” districts, braving obstacles ranging from the annoying to the life-threatening.²⁶ Housing did not trickle down to African Americans; rather, they consistently claimed the right to live where they chose despite ferocious resistance.

Chapter 3 examines the optimism over integration in the 1950s and 1960s by focusing on Chatham, a neighborhood built on swampy land on the Far South Side not fully developed until after World War II. In Chicago and across the nation, liberal academics, journalists, and average citizens touted that middle-class blacks and whites, secure in their status, were ready to mix in places such as Chatham and serve as a new national pattern.²⁷ As well-off African Americans boldly moved into the area, residents tried to coalesce around shared concerns for upkeep, crime prevention, and school quality. Gradually, however, most white residents fled, exhibiting the shortcomings of postwar liberalism. Residential turnover was a common occurrence in the postwar era, and most studies of these neighborhoods conclude as whites exit, neglecting the importance of the aftermath.²⁸ Disappointed but not surprised, middle-class African Americans preserved their enclaves as the city’s shortage of decent housing threatened to decimate their hard-won gains. Chatham was not part of the “second ghetto,” but was among the much-prized “gilded ghettoes.”²⁹ Middle-class neighborhood protection was controversial as critics contended that the affluent had deserted the less advantaged, leaving them bereft of role models, and privileged local matters over civil rights struggles.³⁰ The reality was more complex. A “golden age” of the ghetto had never really existed, as the black middle class had a long tradition of moving out to find hospitable living arrangements. Likewise, most middle-class black Chicagoans did not abandon fellow African Americans, but rather took active roles in the civil rights movement in the 1960s and 1970s.³¹ At the same time, they pushed back against white efforts to solve citywide issues through black middle-class sacrifices. Housing discrimination and white flight left the black middle class to deal with the legacies of segregation and the escalating urban crisis.

Chapter 4 shifts from the neighborhood to the managerial workplace, showing how blacks pushed into the corporate mainstream in the affirmative action era. In the 1960s, after decades of protests and the arrival of government action, African Americans entered corporate careers, greatly expanding the middle class.³² While many scholars have studied this process, few examine how black Americans instigated integration and did its unpredictable work on a daily basis in the salaried ranks.³³ Work and economics were an integral part of the civil rights story, as these quotidian concerns drove the agenda of the freedom movement.³⁴ For blacks in white-collar careers, pioneering was an onerous task. While the positions often came with monetary and status rewards, integration was a grind as white leaders looked to them to perform on the job and to mollify Chicago’s restive black population.

This is a study of the American Dream, but it is far from romantic. It shows that white Northerners paid lip service to equality of opportunity while creating inequality in the educational institutions, workplaces, and neighborhoods that produced the middle class. Black Chicagoans demonstrated their talent and ambitions, but they entered through the narrow gate, preventing them from enjoying the fullness of the country’s bounty. African Americans resisted these restrictions at nearly every turn by moving up into better careers and moving out into higher-quality communities, but their continued marginalization helped create a deeply dysfunctional city. White society made grudgingly small concessions to black strivers and then saddled them with major obligations for easing the city’s racial conundrums.

Black Chicagoans were not merely acted on, though. Migrants came to the city for decades, inspired by visions of prosperity. Though this belief was strained and appeared at several points to be on the verge of collapse, the black middle class kept it from completely falling apart. Chicago, in all its glory and faults, was held together by black dreams of progress.