AF AMER M5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Suffolk, Virginia, Upper Class, Nigger
15 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Brain Lotion- Black Wall Street
1. If i knew then, what i know now…
2. If i were a black migrant i would’ve moved to…
3. The materials share in common…
Black Metropolis
● St. Claire Drake
○ B. Suffolk, VA
○ D. Palo Alto, CA
● Horace Cayton
Creating the Chocolate City
1. Racial Neighborhood preferences matter (p. 176 - 177)
2. Residents Speak Their Minds
a. “I’m not prejudice, but I’d burn this building down before I’d sell it to any damned
nigger.”
b. “There are just too many colored people here now.”
c. “We’ve owned this house for years. I think the Negroes in here should be allowed to
stay, but no more should come in.”
3. Racially motivated violence and real estate (p. 178 - 179)
4. Many ways IN, not many ways OUT
a. “Black Metropolis has becoming a seemingly permanent enclave within the city’s
blighted area. The impecunious immigrant, once he gets his feet, may… move into
an area of second settlement. Even the vice-lord or gangster... “ (p. 206)
b. “The Upper Class: At the top of the social pyramid is a scant 5 percent of the
population - an articulate social world of doctors, lawyers, schoolteachers,
executives, successful business people, and the grugal and fortunate of other
occupational groups who have climbed with difficulty…
c. “The Middle Class: About a third of Bronzeville is in a social position between
‘uppers’ and ‘lowers’... Trying with difficulty to maintain respectability, they are caught
between the class above into which they…
d. “The Lower Class: The Chicago Adult world is predominantly a working-class. Over
65 percent of the Negro adults ear their bread by manual…
1. What do the materials reveal about postwar urban America
2. What strikes you visually
3. What lines struck you most
1. Policies and practices helped generate the organization of Black urban communities
2. Arrival to America’s cities was met with racial violence and accompanied by deteriorating
infrastructure.
3. The social organization of Black communities is one of tremendous class diversity and class
fragility.
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
