Freedom's Ballot: African American Political Struggles in Chicago from Abolition to the Great MigrationIn the spring of 1915, Chicagoans elected the city’s first black alderman, Oscar De Priest. In a city where African Americans made up less than five percent of the voting population, and in a nation that dismissed and denied black political participation, De Priest’s victory was astonishing. It did not, however, surprise the unruly group of black activists who had been working for several decades to win representation on the city council. Freedom’s Ballot is the history of three generations of African American activists—the ministers, professionals, labor leaders, clubwomen, and entrepreneurs—who transformed twentieth-century urban politics. This is a complex and important story of how black political power was institutionalized in Chicago in the half-century following the Civil War. Margaret Garb explores the social and political fabric of Chicago, revealing how the physical makeup of the city was shaped by both political corruption and racial empowerment—in ways that can still be seen and felt today. |
Contents
| 1 | |
One History Memory and One Mans Vote | 15 |
Two Setting Agendas Demanding Rights and the Black Press | 49 |
Three Womens Rights the Worlds Fair and Activists on the National Stage | 83 |
Four Challenging Urban Space Organizing Labor | 117 |
Five Virtue Vice and Building the Machine | 147 |
Six Representation and Race Men | 187 |
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Freedom's Ballot: African American Political Struggles in Chicago from ... Margaret Garb No preview available - 2014 |
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abolitionists African American Afro-American alderman alliance Alpha Suffrage Club Barnett black activists black Americans black and white Black Belt black Chicagoans black leaders Black Political black politicians black voters black women black workers Broad Ax cago candidates Carey Carey’s Chicago Defender Chicago Press Chicago Tribune church city’s city’s black civic civil rights Colored convention debate decades Democrat DePriest editors election elite Fannie Barrier Williams film Frederick Douglass Gosnell History House Ida Wells-Barnett Illinois immigrants Inter Ocean John Jones Jones’s Knights of Labor labor mayor Men’s Merriam Michael Kenna ministers municipal Negro Politicians neighborhood newspapers northern cities organization People’s Prohibitionist Quinn Chapel race racial segregation Ransom reform Republican Party restaurants Second Ward slavery social Socialist South Side southern Street struggles Suffrage Sword among Lions Thompson tion union University of Chicago University Press urban politics votes W. E. B. DuBois Washington Wells-Barnett women’s clubs World’s wrote York