I've Got to Make My Livin': Black Women's Sex Work in Turn-of-the-Century Chicago

by Cynthia M. Blair

For many years, the interrelated histories of prostitution and cities have perked the ears of urban scholars, but until now the history of urban sex work has dealt only in passing with questions of race. In I’ve Got to Make My Livin’, Cynthia Blair explores African American women’s sex work in Chicago during the decades of some of the city’s most explosive growth, expanding not just our view of prostitution, but also of black women’s labor, the Great Migration, black and white reform movements, and the emergence of modern sexuality.

Focusing on the notorious sex districts of the city’s south side, Blair paints a complex portrait of black prostitutes as conscious actors and historical agents; prostitution, she argues here, was both an arena of exploitation and abuse, as well as a means of resisting middle-class sexual and economic norms. Blair ultimately illustrates just how powerful these norms were, offering stories about the struggles that emerged among black and white urbanites in response to black women’s increasing visibility in the city’s sex economy. Through these powerful narratives, I’ve Got to Make My Livin’ reveals the intersecting racial struggles and sexual anxieties that underpinned the celebration of Chicago as the quintessentially modern twentieth-century city.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Sex Work, Gender, Sociology, Feminism, American History

344 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2010

Reviews

[Audacia Ray · Rating 4 out of 5]

Groundbreaking historical analysis of black sex working cis women in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in Chicago. Very thorough with lots of careful citations. And a very interesting compliment to Timothy Gilfoyle's City of Eros - where Gilfoyle mentions black sex workers in passing, Blair digs in deeper, plus does some analysis of why black women have been passed over in the historical record. I hope this is the start of a new scholarship that examines race and the sex trade in a complex way, both in historical and contemporary contexts.

A note on style - whoa, it's been a while since I've read an academic tome. I definitely struggled through some sections of this (relatively short) book. Especially having just come out of reading The Warmth of Other Suns, which has a narrative take on a similar time period in Chicago. I felt like this book filled in some of the gaps about labor, survival, and respectability that The Warmth of Other Suns neglected, definitely an interesting pairing. And though I know this is a scholarly text, I kept wonder what this book would look like it if was written more in narrative form.

[Raven Benson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although this book is full of interesting history, it does become repetitive.

[Lauren Levitt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Engaging history of Black women in the sex trade in turn of the century Chicago. Fantastic maps and photographs. My only complaint is that at times Blair refers to Black women rather than their services as “commodities.”

[Chet Taranowski · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a scholarly book addressing the historical and sociological issues around prostitution and African American women in Chicago. It is particularly fascinating for those interested in Chicago history. The author literally provides the addresses for the various houses of prostitution and saloons in business at that time. But more importantly, the book speaks to the feminist issues surrounding sex work in the early 20th century.

[Cat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting academic look at sex work and general vice/night life of black women in ~1900 Chicago

[Mills College Library]

306.742 B6352 2018

[Ali · Rating 4 out of 5]

"In every sexual transaction-whether it took place in brothels, nightclubs, furnished rooms, buffet flats, hotel rooms, or the streets-black women bore the weight of the racial organization of urban sexual culture and the gender organization of the urban economy."

Cynthia M. Blair. I've Got to Make My Livin': Black Women's Sex Work in Turn-of-the-Century Chicago (Historical Studies of Urban America) (Kindle Locations 3082-3083). Kindle Edition.

A fascinating history of the demographics, spatial, politics and environment of black sex workers in Chicago from the 1880s through to the beginning of Prohibition, this book's strength is the charting of changing black spaces of the time and place. Through tracing the changing venues of sex work - from female run brothels in multiracial space of early Chicago to the more dispersed, racially segregated and community-integrated activities of the Prohibition Era, Blair brings the development of an entire city to life.

It's a dry style, focused on accuracy (including contradiction and uncertainty) over spellbinding tales of derring do, but as she traces the changing nature of prostitutes environment, Blair illuminates race, class and legal spaces forming which still underpin the present. Really good read for someone interested in history, with just the right dose of cautious analysis. The analysis of the role of saloons, bars, theatres and entertainment complex's in black communities actually made me want to watch the rest of the latest Boardwalk Empire season. And that's quite a feat!

My one complaint was to do with the cheaply done ebook edition - which made it impossible to check notes as I was reading. With this book, where a good dose of the content is in the notes - that was infuriating. I ended up reading the whole notes section separately, a bit like a strange aside-based reprise of the book (a commentary?). But so little of the references were built into the text, that it was often impossible to tell what Blair's conclusions were based on.

[Kidada · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book's examination of black women sex workers. The complexity of sex work and black women's reliance on it for survival adds much needed complexity to narratives of the Great Migrations that focus on other types of labor and political issues.

[Lynne · Rating 3 out of 5]

While this is an incredibly interesting subject, the book itself was pretty dry and read like, well, a history book. It wasn't awful, but it did feel like I was trudging through a lot of it.