Ebook: A House for the Struggle: The Black Press and the Built Environment in Chicago

Buildings once symbolized Chicago's place as the business capital of Black America and a thriving hub for Black media. In this groundbreaking work, E. James West examines the city's Black press through its relationship with the built environment. As a house for the struggle, the buildings of publications like Ebony and the Chicago Defender embodied narratives of racial uplift and community resistance. As political hubs, gallery spaces, and public squares, they served as key sites in the ongoing Black quest for self-respect, independence, and civic identity. At the same time, factors ranging from discriminatory business practices to editorial and corporate ideology prescribed their location, use, and appearance, positioning Black press buildings as sites of both Black possibility and racial constraint.

Engaging and innovative, A House for the Struggle reconsiders the Black press's place at the crossroads where aspiration collided with life in one of America's most segregated cities.

Acknowledgments vii

Introduction 1

1 A Card Table and a Kitchen Chair 21

2 A Monument to Negro Enterprise 49

3 A Building on a Front Street 81

4 A Meeting Place for All the People 115

5 A House for the Struggle 147

6 A Poem in Marble and Glass 181

Conclusion 213

Notes 221

Bibliography 259

Index 273

"A well-conceived, effectively researched, and fascinating book." —Choice

"A House for the Struggle is an eye-opening, compelling read in which West shows that Black press buildings on Chicago's South Side were symbolic of community pride, unity and success, as well as crucial meeting places in the fight for Black autonomy and civil rights." —NewCity

"A fresh and engaging work that explores how the design of a built environment can often be a destiny. " —Chicago Review of Books
|E. James West is a research associate in American history at Northumbria University. He is the author of Ebony Magazine and Lerone Bennett Jr.: Popular Black History in Postwar America.