Bronzeville
1920’s – Present
“The appeal to the white man’s pocket has ever been more effectual than all the appeals ever made to his conscience.” Civil rights and women’s rights activist, teacher, and Bronzeville citizen Ida B. Wells understood the importance of the Black community being economic sufficient if they wanted to appeal to the conscience of the white man. Some lessons in our history are overlooked just like the significances and cultural importance of the Chicago neighborhood of Bronzeville.
Chicago’s South Side was the center for African-American culture and business. Known as “Bronzeville,” the neighborhood was surprisingly small, but at its peak, more than 300,000 lived in the narrow, seven-mile strip.Just a year removed from the bloodiest race riots in Black history which violence spread into over 25 cities , the race riots of 1919, for many Blacks in the United States was infamously known as “The Red Summer”. The citizens of Chicago withstood the largest and longest of these race riots, these chains of event lead to the Bronzeville’s 20th-century resurgence, which rivaled the Harlem Renaissance, is responsible for tremendous cultural and social advances.
The seeds of Bronzeville’s thriving economy were sown in the population boom of the 1910s and ’20s. As the number of blacks in the city soared during the Great Migration, demand for goods and services rose and businessmen and entrepreneurs rushed to satisfy the needs of black consumers. Drug stores, barber shops, fish markets, beauty parlors, florists everything a resident could want or need was found close to home in the busy shopping districts of the black community.
Though black businesses were dramatically out numbered by those of whites, they received the support of community campaigns encouraging residents to shop in black establishments. Civic organizations, social clubs, even preachers used their pulpits to promote the concept of the “Double-Duty Dollar,” making a dollar do double duty: first through purchasing a good or service, and second by supporting racial progress through shopping at black-owned stores.
Sources (http://interactive.wttw.com/a/dusable-to-obama-explore-riots-to-renaissance-black-business & http://www.choosechicago.com/neighborhoods-and-communities/bronzeville/)
