Family properties : race, real estate, and the exploitation of Black urban America / Beryl Satter.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Satter, Beryl, 1959-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Satter, Mark J., 1916-1965.

Satter, Mark J.

African Americans--Housing--Illinois--Chicago--History--20th century.

African Americans.

Discrimination in housing--Illinois--Chicago--History--20th century.

Discrimination in housing.

Housing policy--Illinois--Chicago--History--20th century.

Housing policy.

African Americans--Illinois--Chicago--Social conditions--20th century.

African Americans--Relations with Jews.

Landlords.

Lawyers.

Social conditions.

History.

African Americans--Housing.

Chicago (Ill.)--Social conditions--20th century.

Chicago (Ill.).

Chicago (Ill.)--Race relations--History--20th century.

Lawyers--Illinois--Chicago--Biography.

Landlords--Illinois--Chicago--Biography.

African Americans--Social conditions.

Race relations.

Illinois--Chicago.

Genre:

Nonfiction.

Biographies.

History.

Physical Description:

495 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 25 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Metropolitan Books, 2009.

Summary:

Part family story and part urban history, this work is a landmark investigation of segregation and urban decay in Chicago, and in cities across the nation. The "promised land" for thousands of Southern blacks, postwar Chicago quickly became the most segregated city in the North, the site of the nation's worst ghettos and the target of Martin Luther King Jr.'s first campaign beyond the South. In this book, the author identifies the true causes of the city's black slums and the ruin of urban neighborhoods throughout the country. It is not, as some have argued, black pathology, the culture of poverty, or white flight, but a widespread and institutionalized system of legal and financial exploitation. This is an account of a city in crisis; unscrupulous lawyers, slumlords, and speculators are pitched against religious reformers, community organizers, and an impassioned attorney who launched a crusade against the profiteers, the author's father, Mark J. Satter. At the heart of the struggle stand the black migrants who, having left the South with its legacy of sharecropping, suddenly find themselves caught in a new kind of debt peonage. The author shows the interlocking forces at work in their oppression: the discriminatory practices of the banking industry; the federal policies that created the country's shameful "dual housing market" ; the economic anxieties that fueled white violence; and the tempting profits to be made by preying on the city's most vulnerable population. This tale of racism and real estate, politics and finance, will forever change our understanding of the forces that transformed urban America.--[Provided by publisher.].

Contents:

The story of my father

Jewish Lawndale

The noose around Black Chicago

Justice in Chicago

Reform

Illinois-style

The liberal moment and the death of a radical

King in Chicago

The story of a building

Organizing Lawndale

The big holdout

The federal trials.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 385-470) and index.

National Jewish Book Awards - History, Winner, 2009

ISBN:

9780805076769

080507676X

0805091424

9780805091427

OCLC:

237018885

Publisher Number:

99932509689

Online:

Contributor biographical information

Publisher description