Trumbull Park

by Frank London Brown

Frank London Brown's powerful debut novel, originally published in 1959, fictionalizes the real-life ordeals of the first black families to integrate Chicago's Trumbull Park public housing project in the 1950s. Protagonist Buggy Martin tells the first-person story of moving with his wife, Helen, and two children from a rotting tenement on the South Side to the new development, where the family is besieged by angry whites.

With honesty and humor, the richly textured narrative chronicles how the small group of black tenants at Trumbull Park endure the strain of living with racial violence: the endless danger of bombings and shattered windows, filthy insults, callous attention from police, and forced rides in armed convoys to and from work and the market. Until, that is, the day Buggy and a friend refuse police protection and walk home together through the white mob.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, African American

436 pages, Paperback

First published August 9, 2004

Reviews

[Kathleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

My essay about the novel for JSTOR: https://daily.jstor.org/how-trumbull-...

Why aren't more people reading TRUMBULL PARK by Frank London Brown? About black families integrating a housing project in the 1950s? It should be taught in high school. Taught in college. Made into a movie. It's maybe the best Chicago novel ever written.

"Everything had a gloomy look, like somebody had died or was going to. You ever been in the country looking out the window at night, and there ain't nothing out there *but* night, and the moon and tree shadows? And then, like a sick old woman, one of them long, lanky meat hounds climbs up on one of them lonesome, I mean *lonesome* hills and stretches its long, lanky neck and points its head dead at the moon, and lets out one of them backwoods howls--one of them sad, loud moaning howls? Momma used to say a dog howling like that meant somebody was going to die, maybe not that night or the next, but soon.

Lord! That's how I felt there in that house in Trumbull Park that night" (38).

"Don't call those bastards a crowd! I've *told* you over and over again! They're not a crowd. They're a *mob*! A crowd is somebody put next to somebody else. A goddamn crowd goes shopping, goes to Soldier's Field to a DuSable-Phillips football game--a bunch of people all at the same place at the same time. But this bunch of crazy son-of-a-bitches are together for just one thing--to get me! They hate me. I don't mind that, but they add up to their hate, pool it, squeeze it into a ball like a kid does a snowball, and then they throw it at me. Don't you understand that? Only hate keeps them together. And I can feel it, Buggy! It burns me like a fire in hell!" (156).

"I began to see Arthur was like a roach riding an ice cube in a pan of hot water--and I mean *hot* water" (159).

"Nobody said a thing for a while. I felt an icy sadness creep along my insides. Everything was back in place now. We were in Trumbull Park, and white people were throwing bricks, bombs and everything else at us, and we were in my house trying to figure out what to do; and here we had turned our fear--that's what it was--on each other: neighbor against neighbor, race against race--even me against Helen" (175).

"She looked at me seriously: 'It's too bad we can't pick the people to help us fight, Buggy. But it always seems that the most likely ones never come through, and the least likely ones always do. What'll we do--refuse help because it's not from the right people?" (180).

"I don't know whose church radio program it was that was swinging so nice that January Sunday morning. I mean, organs and choirs and people clapping--not that off-the-all holy roller kind of clapping, but that happy-in-time easy-going everything-together kind of clapping. Whosoever church it was, it was going. I felt happy in my bones, like I had just been sent a message from home. From home? I don't know from where. Maybe from the South; maybe from the past; maybe from those people I used to see in Helen's father's Negro history book, with that thick bushy hair fixed up there some kind of way, and those thick curly moustaches, and that proud look that's just beginning to get back in style" (223).

Mr. O'Leary: "'Look'--he looked around himself again like a man expecting to be arrested any minute--'look, boys, wake up! There are no accidents in society. Whatever happens--mobs riots, stuff like that--happens because of something somebody did or didn't do. And in all cases you know what's underneath it all?'

I answered without thinking:
'What?'
'Bread, baby--bread'" (238).

"The first days of nervousness from riding in the squad car past those people along Bensley had settled down into a sort of permanent nervousness that ran all night and all day just like a Fridgidaire--a low humming everlasting nervousness that I'd gotten used to, that didn't scare me much any more even though it made me sit straight up in bed at night, old as I could be and sweating to beat the band" (289)

"The men looked even more stunned and stepped-on than the women; and it made me mad to see such despair. Yes, I guess that's what I saw--despair, sitting like a big fat man on top of all these people. I pulled myself away from them in my mind. I pulled and pulled until I was far enough away from them to be angry at them for feeling only sadness and not boiling, scalding anger. But maybe they did. I only knew that after I swallowed the tears that gripped my throat, I felt anger, anger, anger--anger anger, anger!" (308-309).

"But Terry's little face was as cool and stony as a frowning Abraham Lincoln statue in a downtown park" (312).

"Carl had changed. I knew he had. He was cursing more--yres; but there was something else. There was something strong in him that was pushing its way to the front. I felt like a man coming up out of deep water. I was soaking wet from sweat. I was crying. I was laughing. I was a man. A real man. One who had offered to get his butt kicked--for a point" (322).

"It was a Saturday. We knew the bombs were going to start going off any minute; in fact, it was funny that they hadn't gone off before now. But do you know what we did that night?

We partied!

Terry and Norman thawed out, and those two went with Arthur and Kevin--in the squad car, of course--and got a few cans of Bud and a few Pepsi-Colas, and I went home after some records, and we put the kids in Carl's bedroom on his kids' beds, and had a real, live Saturday night party!" (323)

"Then I remembered. Ricky was a policeman, and a policeman has to let the world know he's around. Testing, testing, always testing--they all do it, the cops. Testing--got to make sure that people respect them, fear them. Ask a question, call somebody back, take an apple off the fruit stand. Free beer, free cigars, free Christmas presents from the merchants on the beat. I had seen all these things, but I hadn't thought much about them, until I saw Ricky the cop. The old Ricky I knew. Now I was getting to know the new Ricky--Ricky the cop" (390).

"I knew that Helen was going to cry in a minute if I didn't say something to her, but I didn't know what muscle to use to make my mind pull a thought out of the noise-picture-feeling that had me locked up" (402).

"There's no need to lie. I was scared. But what a delicious kind of fear! *Winning* fear. You ever feel a winning fear? Like a boxer facing a real big bad cat, but knowing all the time that he *will* whip that cat, whip him to his knees, whip him till the blood runs like water? That's the kind of scared I was--*winning* scared" (414).

[Colleen McFadden · Rating 5 out of 5]

Trumbull Park is a forgotten classic. This troubling and tragic story had me gripped from page 1. It's a story of determination and friendship in the African American community of Chicago's Trumbull Park as they face race riots in the 1950s. I love the characters in this book so much. The author portrays them well. It's hard to believe there are only 35 ratings on goodreads (as of Aug 2022) because of how good it is. Don't let this important story be forgotten.

[Bronwen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Totally underrated. My favorite work of fiction set in Chicago. I re-read it every few years and cry each time.

[Penny · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was drawn to this book because I lived in Trumbull Park Homes when I was a child from 5-7, at exactly the time this story was set. I am white. The story centers around several black families who were the first to be assigned housing in this Chicago project and of the horrors they experienced at the hands of white mobs ... the constant chanting of racial slurs, the bombs going off all through the night, the broken windows that were re-broken as soon as replaced, the snake dropped through a mail slot, the rocks and bricks thrown, the constant harassment. I was unaware of any of this as a child, so reading it now so many decades later was gut wrenching. My mother (dad was stationed in Japan) kept to herself and kept us contained within the safety of our own unit, which was on the edge of Trumbull Park Homes and away from the mayhem.

So that's my back story.

Far more important is the quality of the writing. It is brilliant! Exquisite! Stirring! Soul shattering! The novel is a first person narrative, a story told by Buggy Martin, drill press worker, husband, father to two little daughters with another child on the way, and chronicles how the Martin family came to live in Trumbull Park and what they encountered over many months of living there. We see Buggy's fear, his frustration, his raw anger, his fatigue. We see him grow into leadership and discover a courage he didn't realize he had. The language is so real, so poignant. We meet his black neighbors, see them come together for mutual support, see how the city responds to the daily crisis of the black families living in the Project by maintaining a constant police presence, even if the police never do anything against the white mob, but only contain and constrain the blacks who are their victims.

No spoilers here, but the ending is thrilling and real. Read this book and you can never again pretend not to know how whites treated blacks up north. And you can see how the same brutality has reared up against today's immigrant population, that strain of hatred against people unlike themselves that far too many white people harbor. And there's an undercurrent in the book, a mystery never solved, but that may apply during today's ICE age. Buggy has one white friend, a guy at work, and there's another elderly white neighbor, who both hint at a conspiracy fomented by the wealthy class, by the real estate moguls, to turn poor whites against poor blacks so that that the rich and powerful can ultimately profit. Who is paying for all of those bombs? The whites living in the projects don't have that kind of money. But they have hundreds, thousands, of those bombs that burn blue white against the night month after miserable month.

Mr. O'Leary, the old white man who lives in Trumbull Park Homes and dares to invite his black neighbors over, captures what many of us feel today. "Where is my America, boys? I'm 73 years old. And I'm an outcast for trying to be American!"

And for the beauty of the writing, this passage when Buggy goes to a meeting at Greater Urban Church to hear one of his neighbors speak about what is happening in Trumbull Park. "The sunlight from outside lit up the deep, dignified, stained-glass pictures of Christ in the meadow, Christ crossing the Sea of Galilee, Christ on the Cross. The light caught the blood from Christ's wound and laid it gently across the bald shining head of a dark-skinned man in a navy blue suit. It looked like the man was bleeding." The preacher preached and several pages later "the sun moved the stain of Christ's blood from the dark bald head of the man in the navy blue suit to a little baby sound asleep in the arms of a young girl in a pink hat with a veil."

Frank London Brown is a great writer. This book should be better known. Brown died young, though, at only 34 in 1962, not too many years after the events described in this book, and only 3 years after publishing it. Perhaps that explains why it isn't more widely read. Or perhaps we just can't face the cruelty of truth.

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Filmmakers should be looking at this book immediately. This is the best story I've read in years. Brown's writing is passionate, vibrant, and full of truth. It hit me like a brick thrown through a glass window, what people had to endure in that kind of incredibly hostile environment. This is not your follow-up to a Toni Morrison novel; This is a new class of Historical Fiction set during the Civil War era.

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Insane so few people have read this. “Trumbull Park could mean death—that I knew; but already it meant life, and I wasn’t dying!”

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 I don't know where I read about this "lost" novel, but I am glad I found it. Trumbull Park is an area of Chicago where there was public housing:

The last of three Public Works Administration projects commissioned in Chicago as part of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, Trumbull Park Homes is arguably one of the CHA's most historically significant buildings in its housing portfolio. Built in 1938, the development features a low-density design of two-story rowhouses and three-story apartment buildings spread out across 21-acres. Turmoil erupted in 1953, when the first Black families moved into Trumbull. The subject made a 1954 issue of Time Magazine and spurred a march on city hall by the Chicago Negro Chamber of Commerce. Today, the scene at Trumbull Park Homes is much more tranquil. The outdoor common area features beautifully landscape grounds, repaved walkways and grilling pits perfect for summer barbecues. All 434 units are renovated and ready for occupancy with new kitchens, bathrooms, lighting fixtures and flooring.

Frank London Brown, who was from Chicago and lived in Trumbull Park, writes of a family being one of the few early black families to move in, and the trouble that ensued. I am not sure why this book is not better known, but it is both a sad and important read.

[Chet Taranowski · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought this was an outstanding book. It wasn't all that long ago that an African American moving into a white neighborhood produced the type of hostility that this novel depicts. The author did a great job of helping the reader feel the fear these Black people must have experienced. Today many have forgotten how bad it was.

[Agnes · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was shocking how badly families integrating the projects in Chicago were treated.

This was just too long-no reason to be over 400 pages-the first half needed editing.

[Rachel Swearingen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Inspired by the author's own tumultuous move to Trumbull Park in the mid 50s, Trumbull Park dramatizes the extreme stress and danger faced by several black families trying to integrate a white housing development on the far South Side of Chicago amid the threat of white riots and firebombs. The book is utterly moving, historically accurate, and still resonates today. It bears witness to an ugly chapter in Chicago history, but also to the agency of those who dared. That prestigious white reviewers of the day largely minimized the importance of the novel, either by only seeing Brown in comparison to Richard Wright, or by criticizing him for not depicting, as RL Duffus of the New York Times did, the “white people of Trumbull Park” and their “fears and frustrations,“ is telling.

Much of the novel is phenomenal, especially the opening chapters, and the moving, blues-inspired ending. This is all the more striking when one considers that Brown’s initial training was as a journalist, not as a fiction writer. His depictions of family life, Black identity, and social activism are complex and often tender. Both Langston Hughes and Gwendolyn Brooks admired the novel. Had Brown not passed away at such a young age, he would have most likely left behind a much larger body of work. At the time of his death at 35, he had already published numerous short stories, book reviews, interviews, news articles and op-eds, in addition to Trumbull Park.

His posthumous novel The Myth Maker (written shortly before Trumbull Park) shows a developing writer with a strong command of characterization, plot, and theme. Brown’s subject matter and sense of language was pure Chicago. His descriptions of the city, especially of 58th Street and factory work (probably the Dodge Chicago Plant), are wonderful.

Brown covered the murder of Chicago teen Emmett Till, worked for both the AFL-CIO and the UPWA. His union work and other activism attracted the attention of the FBI, and he earned an infamous FBI index card. He published short stories in the Chicago Review and the Negro Digest. (Check out "MacDougal.") His writing is influenced by his reportage, his local activism, his interactions with other writers and artists, and especially his interest in Jazz. A musician himself, he occasionally sang out at clubs, and he read his stories aloud at The Jazz Showcase on South Plymouth. He joined Thelonious Monk at the Five Spot in New York and cut a 45 of “Let’s Have a Party (Let’s Have a Ball)” with Lil Armstrong.

[Adrienne Fletcher · Rating 5 out of 5]

I "loved" this book, which seems inappropriate as it chronicles such pain, despair and prejudice. Yet, at the same time it demonstrates spirit, determination, and personal growth. I always feel the need to preface my reviews, especially those like Trumbull Park, by asserting that while I might be reading this leisurely, I am distinctly reading it as a historical account. From my perspective, and my understanding of Brown's determination to give voice to Black America during the Cold War that is exactly what his books are, historical documentation. This is supported by Mary Helen Washington who not only wrote the introduction to Trumbull Park, but also explores Brown's work and association with the Communist Party during the 1950s. In fact, it is through her book "The Other Black List" that his texts are placed within context of the era, social turmoil, and restrictions to Black Literature and Art. Through Brown's association with the CP he is able to write (chronicle) the experiences of Blacks as targets of McCarthyism and HUAC. Brown's work also is distinctively different from his contemporaries such as Ellison and Wright who work for the "mainstream" establishment and tend to force their works to fall into the typical representation of 1950s conformity. Brown too addresses this submission to the expected social conduct of Blacks, most notably in the turmoil of the Chicago project where Trumbull takes place, but is much freer to explore the issue of resistance, community, and "vernacular" of the time. Trumbull Park is as contemporary today as it was 50 years ago, which is deeply sad, but gives longevity to an incredible novel of human spirit.

[Kim · Rating 3 out of 5]

American historical fiction....late 1950s Chicago....combating racial hatred and compliance.