Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

List of Tables

Preface

Acknowledgments

One Early Struggles and Community Building

Two The Demand for Black Labor, Migration, and the Emerging Black Industrial Working Class, 1915-1930

Three The Role of the Detroit Urban League in the Community Building Process, 1916-1945

Fourt Weathering the Storm

Five Racial Discrimination in Industrial Detroit: Preparing the Ground for Community Social Consciousness

Six Social Consciousness and Self-Helf: The Heart and Soul of Community Building

Seven Protest and Politics: Emerging Forms of Community Empowerment

Eight Conflicting Strategies of Black Community Building: Unionization vs. Ford Corporate Paternalism, 1936-1941

Epilogue

Notes

Sources

Index

Promotional Information

A Choice Outstanding Academic Book of 19941994 Wesley-Logan Prize in African Diaspora History

About the Author

RICHARD W. THOMAS, Associate Professor of History and Urban Affairs Programs at Michigan State University, is author or co-author of numerous publications in race relations and black history.

Reviews

Patterned after Gilbert Osofsky's Harlem, the Making of A Ghetto (CH, Oct'66), older African American histories focused on the process of ghettoization. Joining newer works, e.g., Joe William Trotter's Black Milwaukee (CH, Jul'85), Thomas's book emphasizes the process of community building, led by the emerging African American industrial working class and domestic servants. In the period between the world wars, schools, hospitals, newspapers, self—help organizations, and a sense of place developed in black Detroit. The Detroit Urban League, the NAACP, The Booker T. Washington Trade Association, and the Housewives League of Detroit all played integral roles in this process. Progress was not without its problems, however; crime, poverty, and despair remained constants. Frequently, skilled African American workers were denied jobs, even in critical defense industries. During this period, African Americans demonstrated their newfound strength by challenging the racist system, first by breaking with the Republican party, and then by turning from the paternalistic support of Henry Ford and joiningg the UAW. Taken with earlier works like Thomas Philpott's The Slum and the Ghetto (CH, Sep'78) Thomas's ground-breaking study should occupy a central place in the literature of American urban history. Advanced undergraduates; graduate; faculty.
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