Before the Ghetto: Black Detroit in the Nineteenth Century (review)

190CIVIL WAR HISTORY for local color had faded she had established herself as a historian of her region. She is fortunate in her editor. Bush's perceptive introduction places her in context, and his selections show her at her best. For example, he includes her characterization of Mark Twain—"Hc is quick to catch your idea, and nice to it, after he catches it" (p. 334); and her dig at Julia Ward Howe: "Mrs. Howe . . . presided at everything—& has done it so long that her air, manner, smile & language arc actually threadbare , from constant use" (p. 379). Such flashes suggest her talent, but she remains a regional writer. Although she insisted that she was no romanticist, she nevertheless represents the school of writing about the South that culminated in Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind. Marilyn McAdams Sibley Houston Baptist University. Before the Ghetto: Black Detroit in the Nineteenth Century. By David M. Katzman. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1973. Pp. xii, 254. $10.00. ) David Katzman begins this carefully researched and written book with an overview of Detroit's black community up to 1870. Thereafter, he devotes a chapter each to residential location and housing quality, the caste system isolating all but upper-class Negroes from whites, the occupations of black men and women, the class system operating within the Negro caste, and black political activities from 1870 to the early years of the twentieth century. Throughout the latter decades of the century, more than 80 per cent of Detroit's blacks lived in a small area of the city's near cast side, most of them crowded two or three families to a small frame building. Although they lived interspersed with whites, there is no record of any social contact except on the part of the elite who alone were free from the constraints of caste. Katzman reinforces the findings of Franklin Frazier, August Meier, and Allan Spear that this elite had its economic base in dealings with the white community, that it was proud of its light skin color, and that it remained aloof from other Negroes. However , Katzman finds that in Detroit by the 1880's the old elite began to give way to a middle-class business leadership with its roots in the black community. The new leadership, which stressed racial identity and self help, appeared before large-scale migration from the South. The author argues that the pressures of caste, the dying out of the old elite, and an aggressive spirit among blacks caused this shift, not the presence of an enlarged market. Despite the transformation of Detroit's economy brought on by large scale industrialization between 1870 and 1910, Negroes remained concentrated in the same marginal and low-paying service occupations. The author mentions the importance of illegal en- BOOK reviews191 terprise among blacks blocked from other avenues of opportunity but does not develop the point. Blocked opportunity prevailed in politics as well. In the 1870's and 1880's, upper-class blacks benefited from the close association between the Republican party and Negro rights. However, as Hazen Pingree and others shifted Republican attention to immigrants and urban reform , blacks lost out. Party bosses in convention assembled were willing to grant some recognition to blacks; white voters in party primaries were not. This shift contributed to the decline of the old elite, many of whose offspring earned a livelihood on the public payroll, and reduced contacts between whites and upperclass blacks. The black class and institutional structure served more to divide than to unite its members. Churches were stratified along class lines, and social clubs reinforced existing patterns of exclusivity. Understandably, the sources are more abundant on the elite than they are for the bulk of the city's blacks, yet Katzman argues that the majority accepted elite leadership and the patterns of stratification that they developed. The verdict here must be, not proven. He also believes that most blacks held to the tenets of the American Dream, despite their exclusion from it. The record is clear that the "leaders," whether the old elite or the new businessmen, did believe in the ideology; those blacks who were the most excluded also lacked means...