Along the Streets of Bronzeville: Black Chicago’s Literary Landscape

193 Pages·2013·2.683 MB·English

by  Elizabeth Schroeder Schlabach

Along the Streets of
B Z V L
N E I E
O
L
R
BLACK CHICAGO’S LITERARY LANDSCAPE
Elizabeth Schroeder Schlabach
along the streets of bronzeville
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the new black studies series
Edited by Darlene Clark Hine and Dwight A. McBride
A list of books in the series appears at the end of this book.
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along the streets
of bronzeville
Black Chicago’s
Literary Landscape
Elizabeth Schroeder Schlabach
University of Illinois Press
Urbana, Chicago, and Springfield
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© 2013 by the Board of Trustees
of the University of Illinois
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
c 5 4 3 2 1
∞ This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Schlabach, Elizabeth Schroeder.
Along the streets of Bronzeville : black Chicago’s literary landscape /
Elizabeth Schroeder Schlabach.
pages cm. — (The New Black Studies Series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-252-03782-5 (cloth : acid-free paper)
isbn 978-0-252-09510-8 (ebook)
1. American literature—Illinois—Chicago—History and criticism.
2. American literature—African American authors—History and criticism.
3. African Americans—Illinois—Chicago—Intellectual life. 4. Chicago (Ill.)—
Intellectual life—20th century.
I. Title.
ps285.c47s35 2013
810.9'977311—dc23 2013012803
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For my family—past, present, and future.
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Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xxi
Chapter 1. From Black Belt to Bronzeville 1
Chapter 2. The South Side Community Art Center
and South Side Writers Group 25
Chapter 3. Policy, Creativity, and Bronzeville’s Dreams 50
Chapter 4. Two Bronzeville Autobiographies 75
Chapter 5. Kitchenettes 94
Conclusion 118
Notes 127
Bibliography 149
Index 159
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Preface
Gwendolyn Brooks, a lifelong resident and Bronzeville native, once wrote,
“If you wanted a poem, you had only to look out of a window. There was
material always, walking or running, fighting or screaming or singing.”1
Brooks did an interview much later in life where she was asked if she were
disturbed by this environment to which she replied, “In my twenties when
I wrote a good deal of my better-known poetry I lived on 63rd Street—at
623 East 63rd Street—and there was a good deal of life in the raw all about.
You might feel that this would be disturbing, but it was not. It contributed
to my writing progress. I wrote about what I saw and heard in the street. I
lived in a small second-floor apartment at the corner, and I could look first
on one side and then on the other. There was my material.”2 She recalled
receiving the letter at this address from publisher Harper and Brothers ac-
cepting A Street in Bronzeville for publication, after which she ran into her
kitchenette apartment building’s “community bathrooms, locked the door,
and gasped through the gold of a firm acceptance.”3
Poverty-stricken, segregated, and bursting at the seams with migrants—
Brooks’s Bronzeville is the community that provided inspiration, training,
and work for an entire generation of diversely talented African American
authors and artists who came of age during the years between the two
world wars. Willard Motley, poet, novelist, and nephew of famed painter
Archibald Motley Jr., the first African American trained at the Chicago Art
Institute, wrote, “There is a small group of young Negro artists in Chicago
that will be heard from one of these days. At present they are struggling in
garage and top-floor tenement studios. . . . They paint for the love of it. There
is much talent in the group.”4 Many of these artists and authors went on
to become the leading names in their fields and in so doing earned for the
United States a reputation as the creative wellspring of twentieth-century
African American art and literature. Yet, until late, the majority of Chicago’s
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