Bridges of Memory: Chicago's First Wave of Black Migration

Chicago Lives

by Timuel D. Black Jr., DuSable Museum (Creator), John Hope Franklin (Foreword)

Winner of 2006 Jewish Council on Urban Affairs Courageous Voices Award
Recipient of 2007 The Hyde Park Historical Society Paul Cornell Award


A collection of interviews with African Americans who came to Chicago from the South.

In their first great migration to Chicago that began during World War I, African Americans came from the South seeking a better life--and fleeing a Jim Crow system of racial prejudice, discrimination, and segregation. What they found was much less than what they'd hoped for, but it was much better than what they'd come from--and in the process they set in motion vast changes not only in Chicago but also in the whole fabric of American society. This book, the first of three volumes, revisits this momentous chapter in American history with those who lived it.

Oral history of the first order, Bridges of Memory lets us hear the voices of those who left social, political, and economic oppression for political freedom and opportunity such as they'd never known--and for new forms of prejudice and segregation. These children and grandchildren of ex-slaves found work in the stockyards and steel mills of Chicago, settled and started small businesses in the "Black Belt" on the South Side, and brought forth the jazz, blues, and gospel music that the city is now known for. Historian Timuel D. Black, Jr., himself the son of first-generation migrants to Chicago, interviews a wide cross-section of African Americans whose remarks and reflections touch on issues ranging from fascism to Jim Crow segregation to the origin of the blues. Their recollections comprise a vivid record of a neighborhood, a city, a society, and a people undergoing dramatic and unprecedented changes.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Race

656 pages, Paperback

First published May 14, 2003

About the author

Timuel Dixon Black Jr. was an American educator, civil rights activist, historian and author. A native of Alabama, Black was raised in Chicago, Illinois and studied the city's African American history.

Reviews

[Jrs · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is necessary reading for every Chicagoan -or culturally cognizant individual- of any age, ethnicity, or creed. Black's conversations elucidate how much communities can change when society -even black society- tries to ignore the ignoble realities of race and class.

[Ben Deutsch · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this one up as a bit of a family heirloom. I met Timuel Black at my grandmother’s Shiva and years later my aunt gave me this book which was inscribed by him with a note to my grandmother. I understood Timuel to be a great civil rights leader because he told me stories of organizing alongside Dr. King when I met him. All that said, I didn’t know exactly what I was getting with Bridges of Memory. I found a difficult but rewarding read. This was my first oral history, which is quite a pivot from more organized narrative writing. I encountered a collection of conversations between Timuel and Black Chicagoans who migrated to Chicago from the South. Many of these people (Timuel included) had grandparents who were enslaved. These conversations together told a story of a Chicago that offered both opportunity and struggle as in some cases these people traded one form of discrimination for another. But there was a throughline of perseverance among community that helped build the Chicago we know today and other beautiful memories and realizations of the city that came to pass. The level of geographic detail in theses conversations was at times hard for someone who isn’t a Chicagoan and there were some memories shared that were too specific to relate to. But nonetheless I appreciated the time that I spent with Timuel and those he spoke with for this ambitious project.

[Totadigi]

BRIDGES of MEMORY
CHICAGO’S FIRST WAVE OF BLACK MIGRATION an oral history by TIMMUEL D. Black JR.

I picked this book up as research for a film project I’m developing on the legendary DuSable High School on the Southside of Chicago in 1954. As I did my research in preparation for my first visit to Chicago people asked me had I read the book by author Timuel Black, PhD. I looked him up on the Internet, found exerts from his book; he graduated from DuSable in 1938 and taught there from 1948 until his retirement. One evening I called him to arrange an interview when I got to Chicago. He told me to get his book and be familiar with it before I come. To call it an easy book to read misrepresents its impact it was comfortable to read. Don’t misunderstand but like a child in the room with elders you sit still listening a party to conversations between people who are familiar with one another in a way they wouldn’t be with strangers. What’s different is you understand everything their saying. There are two Forwards one by John Hope Franklin and the other by Studs Terkel both in their unique ways preparing you for the journey into Black’s historical territory Chicago’s Bronzeville. This is one of Chicago’s most eminent educators, in the manner of an old-time family doctor, making house calls on old friends, some of whom were playmates and schoolmates, as well as the generation of their children, sometimes rekindling his own memories. The stunning city of Chicago was shaped into form in part by the people and events you will learn about. The book is non-fiction history rich with information and detail that comes from first person introspection. The author gets people talking moves the conversation along but never takes center stage. He uses his questions to casually open the gates and the memories flood out. You find yourself wishing you had of had conversations like this with people you’ve known and loved throughout your life. I really liked that he interviewed a broad cross section of the community bankers, hustlers, athletes, military officers, doctors, scientists, entertainers, politicians, law enforcement, and more. I am in deed accustomed to a more incisive and probing approach to history but that wasn’t what this was I got over it. The author in person is a contrast to his writing style. Over the phone he is forceful and exact in his manner I was surprised to meet a small distinguished man in his ninetieth year of life. We had a long lunch together and he invited me to his high school alumni meeting at DuSable where I met former students from the class of 1938 to 1968. In my visit saw the Chicago I had read about for the first time it is a remarkable place and the Black community played a remarkable role in making it what it is today. The book is great reading actually the first of three volumes each one covering a generation up until today. Read the book know Chicago read the book go to Chicago read the book learn something of yourself.

[Heidi Bakk-Hansen · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of a very specific set of Black Chicagoans. I am very into oral histories, but this was heavy on the author's friends and acquaintances, and he puts too much of himself into the interviews. Also, holy cow, so much of the "kids these days are so out of control" kind of old folks commiserating on how much better their generation was. A little eye-rolling was often warranted.

[Wes Freeman]

Impulse buy. Weighing in at about 2 pounds, the book is transcriptions of author/prominent Chicago educator Timuel Black's mid-1990s interviews with septua-, octo- and nonagenarian African-Americans who grew up in Chicago's "Bronzeville." At 20 pages in, the mundane detail is a little thick on the ground (multiple pages of shared recollections, "Remember that light-colored building at the corner of Thirty-ninth and Cottage Grove?" "Sure, that was where those Jones boys lived"), as is the Greatest-Generation-era self-effacement (a 92-year-old activist and real-estate mogul would rather discuss his job as a waiter at the Palmer House than speak about how he fought Mayor Richard J. Daley's infiltration of the local chapter of the NAACP) and hell-in-a-handbasket rhetoric, so the pacing is a little on the languid side. The book seems to be a casual read, but not a boring one, and the level of detail gets kind of comforting after awhile. (It's kinda like talking to your grandad, who'll tell you the make and price of every car he ever owned, but nothing about his time in World War II.) Black, a contemporary of most of his interviewees, already knows the story he's letting others relate and you get the feeling he's steering the ship to someplace he can't tell you about it, so you're job as a reader is to sit tight until you get there and he can show it to you.