The other suburbanites: African American suburbanization in the North before 1950

Journal of American History

Volumn 85, Issue 4, 1999, Pages 1495-1523

  Wiese, Andrew ^a  

^a SAN DIEGO STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 0001288853     PISSN: 00218723     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/2568269     Document Type: Article

References (193)

1. Magnolia Strickland quoted in "Negroes Fight for Better Life in Chagrin Park Shanrytown," Cleveland Plain Dealer, Feb. 2, 1959, p. 1.
2. Marvel Daines, Be It Ever So Tumbled: The Story of a Suburban Slum (Detroit, 1940);
3. Greg Stricharchuk, "The Secret Chagrin Falls," Cleveland Magazine, 10 (Feb. 1981), 49-51, esp. 50, 122-27, esp. 124;
4. Harold M. Rose, "The All-Black Town: Suburban Prototype or Rural Slum?," Urban Affairs Annual Reviews, 6 (1972), 407;
5. Leonard Blumberg and Michael Lalli, "Little Ghettoes: A Study of Negroes in the Suburbs," Phylon, 27 (Summer 1966), 117-31;
6. see also Harold M. Rose, Black Suburbanization: Access to Improved Quality of Life or Maintenance of the Status Quo? (Cambridge, Mass., 1976).
7. In 1940, the United States Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census defined suburbs as the "thickly settled" districts adjacent to a central city, but the bureau drew metropolitan limits using county boundaries. By its definition, there were 468,000 African Americans in northern suburbs and 32,000 in suburbs in the West in 1940 (compared to 208,000 and 7,000 in 1910). In the North and West, most black suburbanites were recent migrants who held urban jobs. In the South, there were 982,000 African Americans in "suburbs" in 1940; many of them, however, were actually farmers. United States Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Eighteenth Census of the United States: 1960, vol. III, pt. 1D: Selected Area Reports, Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas (Washington, 1963), 2-5.
8. Nonwhite home ownership, 1940 (city vs. suburban ring): Chicago, 7% vs. 25%; Kansas City, 15:49; St. Louis, 7:43; Los Angeles, 24:34; Detroit, 15:49; Newark, 3:17 (Essex County); Philadelphia, 10:28; Pittsburgh, 13:19. United States Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Sixteenth Census of the United States: 1940, Housing, vol. II, General Characteristics, pt. 2: Alabama-Indiana (Washington, 1943), 213, 763;
9. Sixteenth Census of the United States: 1940, Housing, Vol. II, General Characteristics ibid., pt. 3: Iowa-Montana, 575, 869;
10. Sixteenth Census of the United States: 1940, Housing, Vol. II, General Characteristics ibid., pt. 4: Nebraska-Pennsylvania, 145, 859, 176.
11. For the ways in which migrants refreshed and reconstructed southern values in northern cities, see, for example, Darlene Clark Hine, "Black Migration in the Urban Midwest: The Gender Dimension, 1915-1945," in The Great Migration in Historical Perspective: New Dimensions of Race, Class, and Gender, ed. Joe William Trotter Jr. (Bloomington, 1991), 134.
12. See also James Borchert, Alley Life in Washington: Family, Community, Religion, and Folklife in the City, 1850-1970 (Urbana, 1980), 100-142.
13. Reynolds Farley, "The Changing Distribution of Negroes within Metropolitan Areas: The Emergence of Black Suburbs," American Journal of Sociology, 75 (Jan. 1970), 333-51;
14. Richard Harris, "Working Class Home Ownership in the American Metropolis," Journal of Urban History, 17 (Nov. 1990), 46-69.
15. Sam Bass Warner Jr., Streetcar Suburbs: The Process of Growth in Boston, 1870-1900 (Cambridge, Mass., 1962).
16. For a sample of this voluminous literature, see Carol O'Connor, A Sort of Utopia: Scarsdale New York, 1891-1981 (Albany, 1983);
17. Henry Binford, The First Suburbs (Chicago, 1985);
18. John Stilgoe, Borderland: Origins of the American Suburb, 1820-1939 (New Haven, 1988);
19. Margaret Marsh, Suburban Lives (New Brunswick, 1990).
20. Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (New York, 1985), 6.
21. Robert Fishman, Bourgeois Utopias: The Rise and Fall of Suburbia (New York, 1987), 4.
22. Harris, "Working Class Home Ownership in the American Metropolis," 56, 58, 62.
23. Richard Harris, "The Unplanned Blue-Collar Suburb in Its Heyday, 1900-1940," in Geographical Snapshots of North America, ed. Donald G. Janelle (New York, 1992), 94-98.
24. Becky Nicolaides, "'Where the Working Man Is Welcomed': Working Class Suburbia in Los Angeles, 1900-1940," unpublished manuscript, 1998 (in Andrew Wiese's possession).
25. Richard Harris, Unplanned Suburbs: Toronto's American Tragedy, 1900 to 1950 (Baltimore, 1996);
26. see also Stephan Thernstrom, Poverty and Progress: Social Mobility in a Nineteenth Century City (Cambridge, 1964), 117-22, 135-37, 155-57.
27. Roger Simon, "Housing and Services in an Immigrant Neighborhood: Milwaukee's 14th Ward," Journal of Urban History, 2 (Aug. 1976), 435-58;
28. Olivier Zunz, The Changing Face of Inequality: Urbanization, Industrial Development, and Immigrants in Detroit, 1880-1920 (Chicago, 1982), 152-53.
29. Harris, "Unplanned Blue-Collar Suburb in Its Heyday," 94.
30. T. J. Woofter Jr., Negro Problems in Cities (New York, 1929), 106;
31. The President's Commission on Home Building and Home Ownership, Negro Housing, ed. John M. Gries and James Ford (Washington, 1932), 13.
32. See also Farley, "Changing Distribution of Negroes within Metropolitan Areas";
33. Harold X. Connolly, "Black Movement into the Suburbs: Suburbs Doubling Their Black Populations during the 1960s," Urban Affairs Quarterly, 9 (Sept. 1973), 91-111.
34. For Columbus suburbs, see Grace E. Richmond, "Housing Conditions in the Outlying Districts of Columbus" (M.A. thesis, Ohio State University, 1926);
35. Harold M. Rose, "The All-Negro Town: Its Evolution and Function," Geographical Review, 55 (July 1965), 362-81.
36. In Youngstown, "Sharline Heights," Cleveland Gazette, Sept. 30, 1923, p. 2;
37. "Beautiful Suburban Building Lots," Pittsburgh Courier, June 19, 1926, p. 3.
38. For suburbs of Cleveland and Detroit, see Andrew Wiese, "Places of Our Own: Suburban Black Towns before 1960," Journal of Urban History, 19 (May 1993), 49, 53-54.
39. Other sources on early black suburbs include Robert T. Ernst, "Growth, Development, and Isolation of an All-Black City: Kinloch, Missouri," in Black America: Geographic Perspectives, ed. Robert T. Ernst and Lawrence Hugg (Garden City, 1976), 368-88;
40. Henry L. Taylor Jr., "The Building of a Black Industrial Suburb: The Lincoln Heights, Ohio, Story," (Ph.D. diss., State University of New York at Buffalo, 1979);
41. Leslie Wilson, "Dark Spaces: An Account of Afro-American Suburbanization," (Ph.D. diss., City University of New York, 1991);
42. Bruce Haynes, "Constructing a Black Suburban Community: The Genesis and Development of Runyon Heights, Yonkers, New York, 1910-1990" (Ph.D. diss., City University of New York, 1994).
43. For black subdivisions in Chicago, Cleveland, and Detroit, see Woofter, Negro Problems in Cities, 107-8, 143;
44. Thomas J. Philpott, The Slum and the Ghetto: Neighborhood Deterioration and Middle Class Reform, Chicago, 1880-1930 (New York, 1978), 107-8, 181-82;
45. Wilbur Watson, The Village: An Oral Historical and Ethnographic Study of a Black Community (Atlanta, 1989);
46. Mayors Interracial Committee, The Negro in Detroit (Detroit, 1926), 58.
47. See also Patricia Rae Adler, "Watts: From Suburb to Black Ghetto" (Ph.D. diss., University of Southern California, 1977); Watts sales by the Golden State Realty Company, Grantor Index, 1913-1920, Los Angeles County Recorder of Deeds (Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk, Department Headquarters, Norwalk, California).
48. Walter G. Clerk, North Amityville: A History (North Amityville, 1976); Subdivision Registrations, Babylon Town Assessor (Babylon Town Hall, Lindenhurst, New York);
49. Rose, "All-Negro Town";
50. Armstrong Association of Philadelphia, A Study of Living Conditions among Colored People in Towns in the Outer Part of Philadelphia and in Other Suburbs both in Pennsylvania and New Jersey (Philadelphia, 1915), 37-39;
51. John Kramer and Ingo Walter, "Politics in an All-Negro City," Urban Affairs Quarterly, 4 (Sept. 1968), 69.
52. "Non-white" home ownership in suburbs compared to that in central cities, 1940: Evanston (26% vs. 7% in Chicago); Pasadena (41% vs. 24% in Los Angeles); Englewood (27%), Hackensack (25%), Montclair (20%) compared to 3% in Newark and 4% in New York. United States Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Sixteenth Census of the U.S.: 1940, Housing, vol. II, pt. 2: Alabama-Indiana, 213, 763;
53. ibid., pt. 4: Nebraska-Pennsylvania, 145, 172, 177, 269.
54. Judge Manuel Rocker (grandson of Samuel Rocker) interview by Andrew Wiese, July 1986 (notes in Wiese's possession); Geauga County Torrens Record Docket, no. 1, Geauga County Recorder (Courthouse Annex, Chardon, Ohio); "For This We Waited," Jewish World, June 14, 1921, p. 1,
55. translation by Phillip Horowitz; "New Allotment Is Started," Chagrin Falls Exponent, June 23, 1921.
56. For black subdivisions in Amityville, Deer Park, Yonkers, and Croton (also Jamaica, Queens), New York; and New Brunswick, Asbury Park, Hackensack, Plainfield, Westwood, Coytesville, Reevytown, Potter's Station, Rahway, and Fanwood, New Jersey; see, for example, New York Age, April 16, 1921, p. 8;
57. New York Age, ibid., July 30, 1921, p. 8;
58. Amsterdam News, Nov. 29, 1922;
59. Chicago Defender, Jan. 17, 1920, Feb. 24, 1923.
60. See also Cleveland Gazette, Nov. 20, 1920, p. 2;
61. Cleveland Gazette, ibid., April 5, 1924, p. 2;
62. Cleveland Gazette, ibid., June 20, 1925, p. 1;
63. "Beat the Landlord, Buy Your Own Home," [Egg Harbor], Cleveland Gazette, ibid., April 9, 1921, p. 3.
64. For the California Eagle, see Wilson, "Dark Spaces," 76-79. As in Chagrin Falls, these subdivisions were typically located in marginal areas with respect to services and transportation. More developed areas commanded higher prices plus the attention of white developers who did what they could to prevent sales to nonwhites. The exception was in areas with existing black communities, where local whites often accepted black migration as long as it was confined to well-defined limits.
65. "$5 per Month Buys You a Lot near Hackensack," Amsterdam News, Nov. 29, 1922, p. 8.
66. Advertising for the Oakwood, Ohio, subdivision was titled as "Stop Paying Rent," Cleveland Gazette, June 14, 1924, p. 1;
67. Shrewsbury Manor and Reevytown, New Jersey, as "Join Hands with Your Own People," Amsterdam News, Oct. 17, 1923, p. 11;
68. New Brunswick, New Jersey, as "Plenty of Work at a Highway Scale," Chicago Defender, Jan. 17, 1920, p. 3 ;
69. Jamaica, N.Y., as "Opportunity for Colored People to Own a Home," Chicago Defender, ibid., July 7, 1917, p. 3.
70. Subdivisions intended for blacks often were given such names as Booker Terrace (Amityville, New York), Subdivision Registrations, Babylon Town Assessor (Babylon Town Hall, Lindenhurst, N.Y.); Douglass Park (near Washington, D.C.), Cleveland Gazette, April 5, 1924, p. 2;
71. Lincoln Heights (Oakwood, Ohio), Cleveland Gazette, ibid., May 31, 1924, p. 1.
72. For advertised real estate prices in Cleveland, see Cleveland Gazette, 1921-1927; Essie Kirklen interview by Wiese, July 16, 1986 (transcript in Wiese's possession); William Hagler interview by Wiese, Aug. 11, 1986 (transcript in Wiese's possession); Geauga County Common Pleas Court Appearance and Execution Docket, nos. 1-7, 1929-1941, Common Pleas Court of Geauga Country (Geauga Country Courthouse, Chardon, Ohio).
73. Using deed records, membership rosters, and other local sources, I compiled a list of 150 adults who lived in Chagrin Falls Park before 1945. Using Cleveland city directories, I verified a last place of residence in Cleveland for 93 household heads, occupations for 73, and housing tenure for 66. 53% of men who moved to Chagrin Falls held unskilled jobs before their move, compared to 45% of black men in Cleveland in 1930. Another 9% worked in domestic or personal service, compared to 16% of black men in Cleveland. Kenneth Kusmer, A Ghetto Takes Shape: Black Cleveland, 1870-1930 (Urbana, 1976), 201;
74. Andrew Wiese, "A Place of Our Own: The Chagrin Falls Park from 1921 through 1950" (Senior honors thesis, University of Iowa, 1987), appendix, 4-9. Without a manuscript census or similar community survey, evidence for nativity is anecdotal. Thirteen of fifteen early residents interviewed for this project were born in the South, as were their spouses and extended families. Because of the role of family ties in peopling the Park, this sample provided information for several dozen families who moved to Chagrin Falls before 1950. By all reports, southerners were the great majority.
75. Clara Adams interview by Wiese, July 29, 1986 (transcript in Wiese's possession).
76. Essie Kirklen interview by Wiese, Aug. 15, 1986 (ibid.); Shepherd Beck interview by Wiese, Aug. 18, 1986 (ibid.); Lula Hitchcock interview by Wiese, July 31, 1986 (ibid.).
77. Kirklen interview, July 16, 1986. Ruby Hall interview by Wiese, July 7, 1986 (transcript in Wiese's possession).
78. 1930 and 1940 totals are for Bainbridge Township. The total for 1950 is estimated from the "Negro" population of Geauga County (758). United States Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Fifteenth Census of the United States: 1930, Population, vol. III, pt. 2: Montana-Wyoming (Washington, 1932), 521;
79. United States Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Sixteenth Census of the United States: 1940, Population, vol. II, Characteristics of the Population, pt. 5: New York-Oregon (Washington, 1943), 628;
80. United States Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Seventeenth Census of the United States: 1950, Population, vol. II, Characteristics of the Population, pt. 35: Ohio (Washington, 1952), 183.
81. The percentage of home ownership for Chagrin Falls Park represents black home ownership in Geauga County. Rural, nonfarm home ownership by blacks in the county (the category that comprised the Park) was even higher, 73%. United States Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Sixteenth Census of the United States: 1940, Housing, vol. II, General Characteristics, pt. 4: Nebraska-Pennsylvania (Washington, 1943), 609, 613.
82. "Chagrin Falls Park Plans to Revitalize," Cleveland Call and Post, Dec. 21, 1974, p. 3;
83. Mary E. Crawford, "Bainbridge School Investigation," March 15, 1946, Chagrin Falls Park School File, Papers of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Cleveland Branch (Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio);
84. "Re Lois Wilson v. Chagrin Board of Education - Geauga Country," Aug. 2, 1945, "Bainbridge School Investigation," ibid.;
85. "Park School Origins," Oct. 1963, Kenston School Board Records (Kenston School District Offices, Bainbridge, Ohio);
86. Raymond J. Walsh, "Exclusionary Housing Practices in Bainbridge Township, Geauga Country, Ohio," typescript, May 31, 1972, p. 3 (in Wiese's possession).
87. Rustic conditions characterized many black suburbs through the 1960s. In East Chicago Heights (Ford Heights), Illinois, for instance, 60% of households had no indoor toilet in 1960. Farley, "Changing Distribution of Negroes within Metropolitan Areas," 340;
88. see also David Kenneth Bruner, "A General Survey of the Negro Population of Evanston" (Senior thesis, Northwestern University, 1924), 34.
89. Marc A. Weiss, Rise of the Community Builders: The American Real Estate Industry and Urban Land Planning (New York, 1987), 68-72;
90. Robert Fishman, "Comment," panel "The Other Suburbanites," annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians, Chicago, Illinois, April 1992.
91. Within incorporated suburbs, too, land use restrictions svere often uneven before World War II. See Harris, Unplanned Suburbs, 147-60;
92. Becky M. Nicolaides, "In Search of the Good Life: Community and Politics in Working Class Los Angeles, 1922-1955" (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1993), 47-48, 54-62, 65, 247-85;
93. Andrew Wiese, "Suburban Community Building: African American Housing in Evanston, Illinois, before 1945," paper delivered at the Seventh National Conference on American Planning History, Seattle, Oct. 25, 1997, pp. 19-27 (in Wiese's possession);
94. Blumberg and Lalli, "Little Ghettoes," 117.
95. Rose, "All-Black Town," 398-99, 418;
96. Wiese, "Struggle for the Suburban Dream," 211-12.
97. Ruby and Stephen Hall interview by Wiese, July 20, 1986 (transcript in Wiese's possession). See also Hitchcock interview; Fannie Derwyler interview by Wiese, Aug. 19, 1986 (transcript in Wiese's possession); Clydie Smith interview by Wiese, July 29, 1986 (ibid.); Estella Jackson interview by Wiese, Aug. 18, 1986 (ibid.); Lumpkin divorce, Case 8934, Nov. 19, 1937, Geauga County Common Pleas Court (Geauga Country Courthouse, Chardon, Ohio).
98. Kirklen interview, July 16, 1986.
99. Ruby and Stephen Hall interview by Wiese, Aug. 22, 1986 (transcript in Wiese's possession). Hitchcock interview; Ruby and Stephen Hall interview, Aug. 22, 1986; Essie Kirklen interview by Wiese, Aug. 11, 1986 (transcript in Wiese's possession); "Summary of the Chagrin Falls Park School Case," typescript, Jan. 11, 1946, Chagrin Falls Park School File, Papers of the NAACP, Cleveland Branch (Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio), 2.
100. Nicolaides, "In Search of the Good Life," 142.
101. United States Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Sixteenth Census of the United States: 1940, Population, vol. II, Characteristics of the Population, pt. 5: New York-Oregon (Washington, 1943), 593;
102. Beck interview; Chagrin Falls Park Community Center, "Residents' Roster," 1983 (in Wiese's possession).
103. Rates of black female employment in domestic service suburbs, 1940: Evanston, Illinois (56%); Mount Vernon (65), New Rochelle (62), and White Plains (60), New York; Montclair (62), East Orange (54), and Englewood (50), New Jersey; Webster Groves, Missouri (54); and Pasadena, California (41). Female participation in the paid labor force in central cities usually ranged from one-third to one-half: Chicago (35%), Cleveland (35), St. Louis (37), Newark (40), Los Angeles (42), and New York (51). United States Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Sixteenth Census of the United States: 1940, Population, vol. II, pt. 1: Alabama-District of Columbia (Washington, 1943), 617, 633;
104. Sixteenth Census of the United States: 1940, Population ibid., pt. 2: Florida-Iowa, 631, 643;
105. Sixteenth Census of the United States: 1940, Population ibid., pt. 4: Minnesota-New Mexico, 445, 459, 893, 896, 928;
106. Sixteenth Census of the United States: 1940, Population ibid., pt. 5: New York-Oklahoma, 132, 135, 160.
107. Alma Walker interview with Wiese, Aug. 12, 1986 (transcript in Wiese's possession); Hitchcock interview; Detwyler interview.
108. See Marsh, Suburban Lives, 100-101, 109-11, 174-79;
109. David Contesta, Suburb in the City: Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, 1850-1990 (Columbus, 1992), 175-89;
110. Nicolaides, "In Search of the Good Life," 103-12.
111. Minutes Book, May 1, 1940, to April 25, 1941, Geauga County Negro Republican Club (in Wiese's possession).
112. "Minutes of Special Meeting," Nov. 6, 1946, Bainbridge Township Board of Commissioners (Bainbridge Township Hall, Bainbridge, Ohio).
113. "Education Committee Minutes," April 3, 1946, Chagrin Falls Park School File, Papers of the NAACP, Cleveland Branch (Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio).
114. Essie Kirklen, "The History of the origin of the Church of God," typescript, n.d. (in Wiese's possession).
115. Ruby and Stephen Hall interview, July 20, 1986; Adams interview.
116. Warner, Streetcar Suburbs, 120, 131, 157;
117. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier, 45-72;
118. John Bodnar, Roger Simon, and Michael P. Weber, Lives of Their Own: Blacks, Italians, and Poles in Pittsburgh, 1900-1930 (Urbana, 1982), 153-80.
119. Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 (New York, 1988), 104-6, 374-77;
120. Leon F. Litwak, Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery (New York, 1979), 398-407;
121. Theodore Rosengarten, All God's Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw (New York, 1974), 236-37, 537-38.
122. James R. Grossman, Land of Hope: Chicago, Black Southerners, and the Great Migration (Chicago, 1989), 36;
123. Peter Gottlieb, Making Their Own Way: Southern Blacks' Migration to Pittsburgh, 1916-1930 (Urbana, 1987), 76, 183, 209-10;
124. Carol Stack, Call to Home: African Americans Reclaim the Rural South (New York, 1996), 17-44.
125. Detwyler interview.
126. Harris, Unplanned Suburbs, 109-35.
127. In metropolitan Los Angeles, Becky Nicolaides uncovered intensive economic uses of property in suburbs ranging from Anglo-American Compton, Southgate, and Bell Gardens to Mexican American East Los Angeles to African American Watts; see Becky Nicolaides, "'Where the Working Man Is Welcomed.'"
128. Margaret F. Byington, Homestead: The Households of a Mill Town (New York, 1910), 46-49;
129. Gretchen Lemke-Santangelo, Abiding Courage: African American Migrant Women and the East Bay Community (Chapel Hill, 1996), 139-41.
130. For self-provisioning in other suburbs, see Alice Bugg interview by Nettie Simons, Oct. 8, 1984, Pasadena Oral History Project (transcript, Pasadena Public Library, Pasadena, 1984), 10; City of Pasadena, Department of Planning and Permitting to owner of 523 Pepper Street, April 4, 1952, Building Permit Files, 1922-1985 (Hale Building, Pasadena, California); and Wilson, "Dark Spaces," 349.
131. See also Armstrong Association of Philadelphia, Study of Living Conditions among Colored People, 11-12, 22, 30, 32, 35, 51, 54;
132. Clerk, North Amityville;
133. Taylor, "Building of a Black Industrial Suburb";
134. Richmond, "Housing Conditions in the Outlying Districts of Columbus," 11-12, 18, 37;
135. Ann Morris and Henrietta Ambrose, North Webster: A Photographic History of a Black Community (Bloomington, 1993), 9, 17.
136. Bruner, "General Survey," 35-36, plate XII: City of Evanston, Department of Building, Permits for 1919, 1921, and 1937 Grey Avenue, Building Permit Files (Evanston Historical Society, Evanston, Illinois);
137. United States Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Sixteenth Census of the United States: 1940, Census of Housing, vol. I, Block Statistics, Evanston, Illinois (Washington, 1942), 6-12.
138. For similar patterns among white workers, see Simon, "Housing and Services in an Immigrant Neighborhood," 448-49.
139. Jackson interview; Kirklen interview, July 16, 1986; Adams interview. Strickland quoted in "Negroes Fight for Better Life," p. 1.
140. Joe William Trotter Jr., Black Milwaukee: The Making of an Industrial Proletariat (Urbana, 1985).
141. For self-provisioning and other economic uses of housing among black coal-mining families, see Trotter, "Race, Class, and Industrial Change: Black Migration to Southern West Virginia, 1915-1932," in Great Migration in Historical Perspective, ed. Trotter, 60, 62.
142. For home production among whites, see Lizabeth Cohen, Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939 (New York, 1990), 11;
143. Jack Temple Kirby, Rural Worlds Lost: The American South, 1920-1960 (Baton Rouge, 1987), 115-33, 298-300.
144. Mayor's Interracial Committee, Negro in Detroit, 58-59;
145. Wilfred S. Lewin, "A Study of the Negro Population of Mount Vernon," typescript, 1935, Civil Works Administration (Mount Vernon Public Library, Mount Vernon, N.Y.), chap. 2.
146. Cohen, Making a New Deal, 147-57.
147. Gottlieb, Making Their Own Way, 49-52;
148. Kimberley L. Phillips, "'But It Is a Fine Place to Make Money': Migration and African American Families in Cleveland, 1915-1929," Journal of Social History, 30 (Winter 1996), 393-413.
149. For the role of kinship in migration to industrial suburbs, see Shirley Ann Moore, "Getting There, Being There: African-American Migration to Richmond, California, 1910-1945, " in Great Migration in Historical Perspective, ed. Trotter, 108.
150. Kirklen interview, Aug. 15, 1986; Detwyler interview; Beck interview; Mr. and Mrs. Noah Pounds interview by Wiese, July 15, 1986 (in Wiese's possession); Walker interview; Geauga County Torrens Record Docket, no. 1; Ruby and Stephen Hall inverview, Aug. 22, 1986.
151. See Marsh, Suburban Lives, 173-79;
152. Barbara Kelly, Expanding the American Dream: Building and Rebuilding Levittown (Albany, 1993), 106-10.
153. Samples of black households in eleven suburbs from the 1920 census revealed similar extended family patterns. United States Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Fourteenth Census of the United States: 1920, Census Schedules, Freeport, N. Y., Enumeration Districts 13-15 (Washington, 1922);
154. Fourteenth Census of the United States: 1920, Census Schedules ibid., Mt. Vernon, N.Y., Enumeration Districts 76-87
155. Fourteenth Census of the United States: 1920, Census Schedules ibid., Montclair, N.J., Enumeration Districts 74-90;
156. Fourteenth Census of the United States: 1920, Census Schedules ibid., Englewood, N. J., Enumeration Districts 22-27;
157. Fourteenth Census of the United States: 1920, Census Schedules ibid., Evanston, Ill., Enumeration Districts 68-89;
158. Fourteenth Census of the United States: 1920, Census Schedules ibid., Glencoe Village, Ill., Enumeration District 119;
159. Fourteenth Census of the United States: 1920, Census Schedules ibid., Harvey, Ill., Enumeration Districts 215-19;
160. Fourteenth Census of the United States: 1920, Census Schedules ibid., Robbins Village, Ill., Enumeration District 25;
161. Fourteenth Census of the United States: 1920, Census Schedules ibid., Maywood, Ill., Enumeration Districts 194-95;
162. Fourteenth Census of the United States: 1920, Census Schedules ibid., River Rouge, Mich., Enumeration District 679;
163. see also Evanston Review, Obituaries, 1950-1990; Oral History Collection (Evanston Historical Society, Evanston, Ill.); Pasadena Oral History Project (Pasadena History Museum, Pasadena, Calif.); Langley Oral Histories (Mount Vernon Public Library, Mount Vernon, N.Y.).
164. Ruby and Stephen Hall inverview, Aug. 22, 1986. Adams interview. Strickland quoted in "Negroes Fight for Better Life."
165. Warner, Streetcar Suburbs, 29-31;
166. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier, 103-37.
167. Detwyler interview. Strickland quoted in "Negroes Fight for Better Life."
168. Ruby and Stephen Hall interview, Aug. 22, 1986. The city's principal black newspaper, the Cleveland Gazette, regularly criticized the level of crime and vice on the east side; see, for example, Cleveland Gazette, April 21, 1923, p. 3; Aug. 23, 1923, p. 3.
169. Beck interview. For urban antipathies in other black suburbs, see Cora Watson interview by S. F. Patton, May 24, 1974, transcript (Evanston Historical Society, Evanston, Ill.), 97; Wilson, "Dark Spaces";
170. Morris and Ambrose, North Webster, 17;
171. Lewin, "Study of the Negro Population";
172. "Official History of River Rouge [Michigan]," Minutes, River Rouge City Council, March 23, 1971 (River Rouge Public Library, River Rouge, Mich.).
173. For race and identity in white suburbs, see Becky Nicolaides, "My Blue Heaven: Life and Politics in the Working Class Suburbs of Los Angeles, 1920-1965," unpublished manuscript, 1997 (in Wiese's possession).
174. Kirklen interview, Aug. 11, 1986.
175. George J. Sanchez, Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1910-1945 (New York, 1993), 198-201;
176. Simon, "Housing and Services in an Immigrant Neighborhood," 447-50;
177. Zunz, Changing Face of Inequality, 170-74;
178. Harris, Unplanned Suburbs, 109-35;
179. Richard Harris and Matt Sendbuehler, "The Making of a Working Class Suburb in Hamilton's East End, 1900-1945," Journal of Urban History, 20 (Aug. 1994), 486-511.
180. For the impact of land use controls on working-class suburbanization, see Harris, Unplanned Suburbs, 233-63;
181. also Henry L. Taylor Jr., "City Building, Public Policy, the Rise of the Industrial City, and Black Ghetto-Slum Formation in Cincinnati, 1850-1940," in Race and the City: Work, Community, and Protest in Cincinnati, 1820-1970, ed. Henry L. Taylor Jr. (Urbana, 1993), 176.
182. On similar efforts after World War II, see Andrew Wiese, "Racial Cleansing in the Suburbs: Suburban Government, Urban Renewal, and Segregation, 1945-1960," in Contested Terrain: Politics and Participation in the Suburbs, ed. Marc Silver and Martin Melkonian (Westport, 1995), 61-70;
183. Andrew Wiese, "Struggle for the Suburban Dream: African American Suburbanization since 1916" (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1993), 206-13.
184. On the impact of the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and Veterans' Administration on postwar suburbanization, see Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier, 203-18;
185. Davis McEntire, Residence and Race: Final and Comprehensive Report to the Commission on Race and Housing (Berkeley, 1960), 291-314;
186. also Charles Abrams, Forbidden Neighbors: A Study of Prejudice in Housing (New York, 1955).
187. On FHA-backed housing for African Americans, see Roland Sawyer, "FHA Program Aids Minorities," Insured Mortgage Portfolio, 16 (4th Quarter, 1951), 6-9;
188. Donald W. Wyatt, "Better Homes for Negro Families in the South," Social Forces, 28 (March 1950), 297-303;
189. William H. Wilson, Hamilton Park: A Planned Black Community in Dallas (Baltimore, 1998).
190. Farley, "Changing Distribution of Negroes within Metropolitan Areas," 344.
191. In 1960, the African American population of Bainbridge Township (of which Chagrin Falls Park comprised the vast majority) peaked at 892. By 1990, black population had slipped to 507, but not all African Americans in the township lived in Chagrin Falls Park. United States Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Eighteenth Census of the United States: 1960, Population, vol. I, General Population Characteristics, pt. 37: Ohio (Washington, 1961), 135;
192. United States Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Twenty-first Census of the United States: 1990, Population, vol. I, General Population Characteristics, pt. 37: Ohio (Washington, 1982), 572;
193. "Building a Proud Future," Chagrin Valley News-Herald, April 19, 1998, p. A8.