Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago 1940-1960

by Arnold R. Hirsch

In Making the Second Ghetto , Arnold Hirsch argues that in the post-depression years Chicago was a "pioneer in developing concepts and devices" for housing segregation. Hirsch shows that the legal framework for the national urban renewal effort was forged in the heat generated by the racial struggles waged on Chicago's South Side. His chronicle of the strategies used by ethnic, political, and business interests in reaction to the great migration of southern blacks in the 1940s describes how the violent reaction of an emergent "white" population combined with public policy to segregate the city.



"In this excellent, intricate, and meticulously researched study, Hirsch exposes the social engineering of the post-war ghetto."—Roma Barnes, Journal of American Studies



"According to Arnold Hirsch, Chicago's postwar housing projects were a colossal exercise in moral deception. . . . [An] excellent study of public policy gone astray."—Ron Grossman, Chicago Tribune



"An informative and provocative account of critical aspects of the process in [Chicago]. . . . A good and useful book."—Zane Miller, Reviews in American History



"A valuable and important book."—Allan Spear, Journal of American History

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Race, Sociology, Cities, American History, Urban Studies

384 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1983

Reviews

[Jazzy · Rating 3 out of 5]

A great detailed view how a government employs planned systemic racism via a myriad of ways to ensure the subjugation of African-Americans across a span of 20 years. The examples actually extend back another 20+ years and forward a few years, making this a span of about 50 years.

The plan of the Chicago (and Illinois statewide) businessmen and politicians worked to a staggering success. So much so, it was copied countrywide by untold hundreds of municipalities.

A question is often asked: "Why does (insert government/societal/charitable agency/organization) fail in the implied goal to help all people?"

The answer is: "Those entities did not fail. They succeeded in their objectives, far exceeding every expectation."

The proof is everywhere. It is only up to us to absorb the lessons. In this book are lessons by the bunch.

This gets 5 stars for the raw information and data. 2 stars for lack of engrossment, beyond that of the information itself. Overall, I give it 3.5 stars.

[Kayla Behforouz]

Trying to read about Chicago history because I’m here n all

If it was supposed to be a book -> ⭐️

If it was supposed to be an academic paper -> ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

For me the key insight is that this spatial arrangement we know as the ghetto is not static or unchanging or some historical holdover that we can't quite seem to get rid of. Instead, 'the contemporary ghetto appeared a dynamic institution that was continually being renewed, reinforced, and reshaped' (xii). It's forces now as well as the past we need to be analyzing.

He writes up front:

primary attention is devoted to whites. That is where the power was. This is not to say that blacks have simply 'reacted' to the actions of others and do not 'act' in their own behalf. But what we are looking at here is the construction of the ball park within which the urban game is played. And there is no question that the architects, in this instance, were whites' (xii)

Of all the books I've read, this is the most explicit about class differences and the different costs of policy and geography to whites in Chicago, also the most sympathetic to working class rioters. He certainly does show that 'white hostility was of paramount importance in shaping the pattern of black settlement' (9).

It was the sheer presence of the first ghetto and the white reaction to it, though, tht did the most to produce the second. In creating it, white Chicago conceived a "Frankenstein's monster," which threatened to "run amok" after World War II. The establishment of racial borders, their traditional acceptance, and the conditions spawned by unyielding segregation created an entity that whites feared and loathed. Those who made it were soon threatened by it, and, desperately, they both employed old techniques and devised new ones in the attempt to control it. Others elected to flee to the suburbs, thus compounding the difficulties of those left behind. In any event, the very process of racial succession, dormant for nearly a generation, inspired both the dread and the action that called forth the second ghetto (15-16)

Oh, white people and their imaginations sparked by their racist ways. There is so much to be unpacked in this paragraph, but I'm saving that for later.
Another key idea:

The forces promoting a durable and unchanging racial border--the dual housing market, the cost of black housing, restrictive covenants--were, at first, buttressed by teh hosing shortage. Once new construction began, however, those same forces became an overwhelmingly powerful engine for change(29).

Of these forces, restrictive covenants were possibly the least effective, he notes they are only 'a fairly coarse sieve, unable to stop the population when put to the test.' (30)

He notes the 'imagined "status" differences that were impervious to the bleaching power of money' (35), the fears of losing the 'life and death' struggle for housing. He also notes the shift from open racism in the struggle to protect neighbourhoods to the use of planning jargon and the language and tools of redevelopment. Another key insight is into the nature of Chicago's 'hidden violence', kept quiet by media and 'conscious city policy' (42) to try and dampen the possibilities of even more extended racial violence like that erupting in 1919 and 1943 when many lives were lost at the hands of white mobs. In fact white mobs were able to form at will to 'protect' their turf, and these collections of 'Friends, neighbors, and rioters' were horrific. They are fairly well documented as well, a large proportion of working-class immigrants coming together (German, Irish, Slavs, Poles), a large proportion of Catholics, almost all from the neighborhood under threat (no outsiders here stirring things up...).

They are in contrast with the equally racist but more liberal sounding community near the University of Chicago, and the startling role of the University itself in consciously protecting neighboring areas for whites. Actually, what I find startling is not that they had that policy, but how much is solidly documented in how their expansion from 7 to 110 acres was to stop African-Americans from 'encroaching'. But they were certainly masters of manupulating city agencies and urban renewal to protect their interests, often at the cost of tearing down good housing and displacing working class white communities (which they viewed as liabilities given their vulnerability to 'inflitration') as well as black communities. Chancellor Hutchins of the University wrote the following poem:

The Chancellor and the President gazed out across the park,
They laughed like anything to see that things were looking dark.
"Our neighborhood," the Chancellor said, "once blossomed like the lily."
"Just seven coons with seven kids could knock our program silly."
"Forget it," said the President, "and thank the Lord for Willie."

Just as telling:

Nothing would have shocked Hype Parkers more than the assertion that they were part of a generalized "white" effort to control the process of racial succession in Chicago. The imputation of brotherhood with the ethnic, working-class rock throwers would have been more than they could bear. Yet, there was just such a consensus (171)....
Chicago's whites found themselves engaged in a desperately competative struggle with each other. The successful "defense" of one neighborhood increased the problems of the others (172).

What troubled me most about the framing was some of the evaluation of strategy. Hirsch writes:

The ethnics' defensive yet militant espousal of their "whiteness," however, and the demand for privilege on that basis, was a flawed defense in the context of post-World War II race relations' (197)

The use of the word 'ethnics' causes me a twinge (as natives does later on in reference to whites), but something about the idea that submerging themselves into the white identity caused immigrants to lose out on gaining from minority status is worse. Hirsch does note that this also downplays the differences between national and racial differences in US history and forms of oppression. But then he continues:

Second, the immigrants and their children displayed the poor judgment of becoming militantly white at the precise moment prerogatives of color were coming into question. If they were successful in finally lining their identity to that of the natives, they were left not simply with the natives' privileges of rank but also with the bill for past wrongs that the "whites" were now expected to pay' (198).

This simply feeds into a neoconservative line that these 'bills' have been paid when they have never ever been properly faced in this country, much less paid. Sure working class whites have benefitted less and been screwed over plenty of times, but they have still benefitted, and inequalities in wealth between them and all peoples of color continues to grow.

Back finally to the formation of the 'Second Ghetto'. The one that emerged after downtown interests and other powerful institutions like the University of Chicago anchored in the center city under threat 'realized that the power of the state -- not as it then existed but in greatly augmented form -- would have to be enlited in their aid' (213). The working class whites defending their neighborhoods never managed to wield this kind of power, but violence did prove 'effective' in many neighborhoods (far more than those who simply relied on covenants), did influence public policy, and certainly impacted the Chicago Housing Authority so that it institutionalized segregation as policy -- particularly in projects where whites were willing to fight violently against integration. These new pressures -- planning, redevelopment and public housing policy -- combined to make segregation more a result of government policy than private activity. It was so entreched, when the federal court ordered further public housing to be fully integrated in 1969, Chicago just stopped building new housing.

Chicago's redevelopment policies -- developed primarily to benefit the University of Chicago and other downtown interests, then became models for the nation. But this story is a failiar one to anyone who knows Detroit, St Louis, L.A., probably any city in the whole damn country.

[May · Rating 4 out of 5]

Originating in an question about the relative racial peace of the post-WWII era, compared to the post-WWI era, Arnold Hirsch finds the "hidden" violence of 1940-1960 is just a symptom of the larger struggle to confine black Chicagoans to the South and West sides of the city. In Making of the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago, 1940-1960, Hirsch examines the strategies, actors, institutions, interests, and policies wielded to "make" the pattern of residential segregation he calls the "second ghetto." In seven chapters, he shows that during the Second Great Migration in the 1940s, the influx of black migrants exploded the boundaries of the Black Belt, expanding black eras while isolating its black residents even further. Through government policy and support (especially through its FHA/HOLC policies, urban renewal, and public housing programs), white ethnic mob violence against black residents and the seeming threat of black residence, and downtown business interests that made urban revitalization a major priority at the expense of black relocation and slum clearance, black Chicagoans were concentrated in certain areas of the city, entrenched in a second ghetto that established a pattern of postwar development in urban renewal in cities across the country.

[Marley · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

During and after WWII, American cities were overwhelmed by new residents. Slum conditions abounded, especially for Blacks and recent immigrants. The feds decided to help, and funded local housing administrations to build new, better housing for the cities. The result was ... mostly building high-rise projects where the Black slums used to be. This was not, on the whole, an improvement. Why go to so much effort and leave so many people NOT better off?

Hirsch's book explains how and why these decisions happened in Chicago. It's a terrific work of social history, charting the actors, ideologies, institutions, and political forces that turned the old South Side ghetto into the new one. White neighborhoods, wholly opposed to integration, would either flee to the suburbs (if they wanted), control local development in their own interest (if they could—Hyde Park was the case in point here), or simply riot if they felt they had to (which happened all over the South Side in the '40s and '50s).

Hirsch shows how continued racial segregation didn't just happen. It was chosen and reinforced by both state and private actors, each acting in their separate interests, to devastating end for Black communities' wealth building and quality of life. Nobody did this; or everybody did this; but it worked, silently but with total effect. The power analysis suggests both Niebuhr and Foucault, to my mind. I will think on this more and keep reading about it!

[Mare · Rating 4 out of 5]

Infuriating, due to the accuracy of Hirsch's thesis & evidence. I student taught last year in the shadow of Lake Meadows, which still stands, unlike the CHA high rises. The segregation of Chicago is no mere accident - it was designed and enginerred that way. Today, in 2015, 10% of the city's population is on the CHA's waiting list. Infuriating.

[Adam Stern · Rating 4 out of 5]

A classic of urban history and essential in understanding how and why Chicago remains segregated. Not especially readable, pretty dense, but the level of scholarship is impressive.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hirsh argued that segregated public housing in Chicago served as a templet across the United States. In Chicago, Hirsh said, the highly concentrated housing segregation and expansion of the old South Side ghetto was fueled by both violence of working class whites and economic pressures by big business and institutions to keep newly arriving African-Americans out of both working class and middle class white neighborhoods. Any housing project proposed in white neighborhoods was vigorously opposed, either in city council or by violent riots against black neighbors, or through buying up and pricing out poorer blacks, such as in Hyde Park through University of Chicago, or in the Loop, when businesses bought it up to avoid being surrounded by black slums. Because housing was so limited for newly arriving black residents, black politicians had to accept more and more expansion of high rise public housing, which led to even more concentrated segregation in Chicago in the South Side and somewhat in the West Side. The patterns in Chicago would be replicated across the nation.

Key Themes and Concepts
-Whites across class used whatever means they had to oppose black residents from living in their neighborhoods. Middle class whites sought to use the language of class to price out black residents, and only keep “the good ones”. Businesses and institutions pushed for redevelopment and renewal, which further concentrated blacks across the city into a confined overcrowded neighborhood.

-The Chicago Public Housing Authority became a driver of segregation in Chicago, as only high rise housing went up in black neighborhoods, which fueled the expansion of the post-war southside ghetto.

-The Chicago ghetto was created intentionally and not an accident.

[Viral · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is one defining feature of the urban political geography of Chicago: the map of the racial demographics of the neighborhoods. But *how* did the city become so jarringly segregated? Making the Second Ghetto is a seminal and powerful piece of scholarship that really transformed how so many people thought about the history of Chicago during the mid century. Hirsch shows in painstaking, brutal detail, how the growing Black population of Chicago during the Great Migration created a housing crisis that white folks responded to with brutal racial violence. From burning down houses, protesting and rioting, and pressuring the city government to keep public housing segregated, divided, and mismanaged, this book is critical to understanding why the South and West Sides are the "black" parts of Chicago. It was not by accident, it was not inevitable. It was a systematic response from white people, community groups, unions, businesses, and politicians. It was precisely this response and the corresponding capital flight that followed that hollowed out the neighborhoods Black folk moved to, and directly led to the massive doom loop of poverty and disinvestment that has plagued the Black communities on the West and South Sides ever since.

This book is a pivotal piece of urban studies work, and is critical to understanding how Chicago became the city it is today. It is a bit dated at times and quite academic, but it is worth reading.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book provides a good analysis of the failure of urban renewal in Chicago and lessons for the country at large. I was especially interested because I grew up and lived in Chicago and its suburbs for a good number of years. I was troubled by the way Hirsch deals with the "exodus" of the Jewish community from the city's West side. There is a case to be made that these people were in the process of leaving though I knew the children of some of these folks and its pretty clear that they were chased out of their homes.

[John NM · Rating 5 out of 5]

Important history of housing in Chicago amidst the rapid transitions in the second half of the Great Migration. Main thesis, well supported, is the existence of "Second Ghetto" depended critically on legal power to enforce and maintain segregation. Was particularly fascinated by the chapter on the University of Chicago and its active role in preventing rapid racial transition of surrounding neighborhoods. Highly recommended.

[Kristen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting book about the way the government and CHA enforced segregation after WW2. My mom grew up at Lathrop homes and I always thought she said it was somewhat integrated but this book says it was all white. Responses from various communities was often violent and angry about any families trying to move into an all white area. If you like Chicago history, good to read but he gets I to some very detailed information about meetings and CHA/area group management.

[Doris Raines · Rating 5 out of 5]

CHIC. TOWN THOSE WERE THE DAYS.

[Beckett Zinn-Rowthorn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Illuminating if somewhat tedious study of race and housing in postwar Chicago

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

"A dynamic institution, not a dead inheritance from the past."

[kami · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was a nightmare to read, especially since we were required to finish it in a week and I had to spend hours a day trying to get through this dense, theoretical, policy-centered text.

I will say that this book has very interesting content. I learned a lot about the inner-workings of policy and politics and the ways white people (both institutions and poorer, working-class groups) manipulate space to work in their favor. Because I learned about things like the Chicago Housing Authority, the UChicago and Hyde Park situation, Elizabeth Woods, Congressman Dawson, the Blight Redevelopment Plan, urban renewal, etc., I was able to have a much stronger grasp on urban housing policy and Chicago as a pioneer in creating racist urban housing policy. Hirsch quite effectively argues and explains how white groups in Chicago used violence and policy to "create the second ghetto", or build housing projects in slum areas to maintain segregation and prevent black people from entering into white neighborhoods.

However, the book is dense and very academically written. It is very hard to get through at points, and I found myself having to VERY closely read the text and annotate in order to properly follow what was going on. There is not much storytelling aspect to the text -- just stated facts and events and analysis. Towards the latter half, Hirsch gets very repetitive and it's difficult to understand his methodology in organizing his arguments in the way that he does.

I wonder if I would've liked this book more if I didn't have to read it in such a short amount of time, but I know that I wouldn't have. I also feel like I just wouldn't have read it at all if I wasn't in this class, which makes me somewhat glad that I was enrolled. I now have the knowledge that the book presented, although I won't say that it was presented in the most efficient, concise, or interesting way.

[Zak Yudhishthu · Rating 5 out of 5]

A rich, detailed history of Chicago’s urban renewal era and the racism that defined it. Covers many facets, including the roles of white ethnic communities, business interests, and the Chicago political machine. This is a somewhat specific history, covering just a couple of decades, and mostly focusing on urban renewal policy. But it covers that specific topic extraordinarily well.

[Michael Brickey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hirsch details the power players involved in the building of the State street projects in Chicago. I really liked this book for a few reasons, namely the process of powerful, moneyed interests combining with Chicago politicians to "legally" fight the tide of black integration into previously all-white neighborhoods. Hirsch uses the term "racial succession" to describe how whites fled once blacks moved into certain areas. I also found interesting the development of white identity. Ethnic communities (Irish, Germans, Poles, Slavs, Anglos) came together to fight against racial succession. In many cases the ethnic groups resorted to stoning houses, breaking windows, harassing motorists, and all out mob violence. The only thing missing from this book, and its a big one, is the role of blacks. While reading, I was asking, 'so what was the black community's response to the violence, herding, and population concentration of their people?' I didn't get an answer, and perhaps that is another book. He ends with the turbulent 60's right around the corner so the history of black agency and black mobilization in Chicago would certainly be a topic worth researching. (I'm almost certain it has been). I only assume he leaves the internal story of the black community out because of the very fact that they had no choice in the issue of housing. Nobody asked them if they'd like to live in a twenty story building of 2000+ units beside twelve other identical structures. Their inability to act on their own behalf was fundamental in the racially motivated city planning process in Chicago. The housing issue in Chicago was a symptom of the larger racially motivated society of the US.

[Rock · Rating 3 out of 5]

Same old American story: Corporations lobby government for substantial subsidies, which they use to oppress African-American and impoverished communities. This case study includes an interesting twist, though: the contrast between Hyde Park, a wealthy, liberal neighborhood that used the University of Chicago and legal redevelopment tools to nominally integrate, and several less wealthy nearby neighborhoods that didn't have the institutional support to use those tools and as a result erupted in violence and eventually ghettoized. Not very dry for an academic work and an essential case study for understanding the state of the American city.

[Kristin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book for my residential segregation and education class - its a fascinating, incredibly detailed account of the political and social processes that contributed to urban renewal and the creation of the "second ghetto" in chicago. A powerful account of how persistent residential segregation does not "just happen" but is the result of explicit policies and economically- and racially-driven choices. Hirsch's approach, which is to follow a different component of the overall story in each chapter, leads to some repetition and timeline confusion. All in all, a solid account of a specific period in the life of a city.

[Deborah McCoy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I could not put this book down. Housing patterns, particularly in the African American community, are not arbitrary. Not hot news to me. But the fact that the major Chicago newspapers (even the Chicago Defender) colluded to cover up serious race riots that occurred in several Chicago neighborhoods is shocking. That most Chicagoans are not only ignorant of the history of public housing but haven't the tiniest desire to educate themselves is a shame and it contributes to the segregation in our city.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Devastating account on how both public and private interests can use the law to entrench segregation into inner cities just as deeply as any former Confederate state could during the period between 1940-1960. The book is a little dry, but the message is what matters

[Megan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read for Chicagoans concerned about race and segregation, about systemic discrimination. For those residents of the West and South sides, such an eye opener to how our neighborhoods developed.

[Ryan Erickson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incisive study into urban development. Really fascinating and a true must for people who are interested in urban development and the historical state of race relations in America.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hirsch's work is both narrow and detailed. In retrospect, he clearly lays out his aims; they just weren't exactly what I was looking for.

[Aliceanna]

Thorough, infuriating.