The Depression Comes to the South Side: Protest and Politics in the Black Metropolis, 1930-1933

Introduction

introduction 1 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 On 31st Street the old Royal Gardens Cabaret has been converted into a shelter. Incognito under its chaste green and white paint the ornately carved ceiling and deep stairway betray its frivolous, gaudy past. The years gone and fewer, here was the centre of Chicago’s “night life.” —Thyra Edwards, 1932 In Dickensian terms, if the decade of the 1920s, dubbed the Jazz or Aspirin Age, represented the best of times with the emergence of a racially self-contained Black Metropolis of national renown, then the decade of the 1930s certainly illustrated all aspects of the worst of times. Both the black-run political machine and the strength of the political economy that had supported the Black Metropolis through its black-owned banks and myriad businesses had disappeared.1 In contrast, the buoyant gaiety of the previous decade in the creative arts, impressively expressed in jazz, blues, dance, and the visual arts, maintained its energy despite general economic distress. In the shadow of the nation’s worst economic collapse, the declining quality of life for the African American residents of Chicago’s vaunted South Side community reached a nadir. At least it seemed that way, first to the few and then to the many, as the ravages of the economic depression swept through the entirety of the African American community’s multilayered class structure, just as they had the whole city. The abandonment of the once proud Royal Gardens Cabaret on 31st Street displayed the most convincing evidence that the economy was, more than faltering, in a state of perpetual free fall. The cabaret was transformed from its former status as a vital entertainment venue and Introduction Double-Consciousness and the Emergence of the Decolonized Text/Subject 2 the depression comes to the south side converted into a shelter for the homeless of all races. The public was experientially divided: some stood in disbelief of what they were witnessing , while others were left nodding their heads in affirmation at the steady deterioration of the entirety of the American economy. The process of economic disintegration had begun slowly around 1926 and then accelerated into full force over the next four years. By 1930, economic experts, displaced workers, and distressed housewives were all talking with equal readiness about the four successive quarters of the shocking decline in all sectors of the nation’s economy, while day by day and dollar by shrinking dollar the public experienced it in all its devastation. This unraveling of the nation’s economic fabric in employment, business , credit, and public confidence spared no race or region, so the Black Metropolis faced the probability of decline and subsequent disappearance as quickly as it had emerged. On the cusp of a national catastrophe, hope shone through in very few areas. Foreboding signs of economic dislocation appeared as early as 1926, notwithstanding the somewhat idyllic picture of industrial and overall economic stability presented by E. Franklin Frazier and Claude A. Barnett on the eve of the Great Depression (that picture of the twenties has since been challenged by historical writer Gareth Canaan).2 By 1926–1927 prevailing unemployment became an accurate barometer of the state of the economy.3 The truthfulness of the old economic adage depicting the precarious position of the black worker in the American labor force as being “the last hired, the first fired” began to take its toll within the Black Metropolis and throughout the surrounding black enclaves. The formation of the Joint Committee for Employment within the Black Metropolis , aimed at amelioration of the crisis, illustrated the larger response.4 At the same time, the Chicago Urban League likewise geared its resources to fight this pending disaster. Both the records of the Chicago Urban League and the Chicago Defender indicated that unemployment of black workers was growing. College students who belonged to the Washington Intercollegiate Club responded by volunteering and canvassing the South Side in cooperation with the League “to create a greater number of positions and jobs for Negroes.”5 The Chicago Urban League subsequently directed its energies in 1927 to increasing employment for high school–educated black youth in stores located within their communities, where black patronage was high.6 As economic conditions worsened at the end of the...