Black Metropolis

Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City, authored by St. Clair Drake and Horace Cayton, is an anthropology and sociology study of African American urban experience focused on the first half of the twentieth century. Expanded editions added some material relating to the 1950s and 60s. Relying on massive research conducted in Chicago, primarily as part of a Works Progress Administration program, Drake and Clayton produced, according to the Encyclopedia of African American History, a "foundational text in African American history, cultural studies, and urban sociology."^{[1][2] [3]}

The original text begins with an introduction by novelist Richard Wright in which he relates some of the research to the themes of his work, particularly the novel Native Son. The preface of the book, authored by Drake and Clayton, gives an overview of the text. The first part of the book provides a sketch of the history of African-American descendants in Chicago, up to the time of the Great Migration. The text continues with explorations of what forces made the separate Black Metropolis, and how that community relates to the wider metropolis. Chapters include, Breaking the Job Ceiling, Black Workers and the New Unions, and Democracy and Political Expediency, in which the power politics of the newly dynamic community over the wider society is explored. The book continues with a detailed portrait on the life of the community in such chapters as The Power of the Press and the Pulpit, Negro Business, and separate chapters on the upper, middle and lower classes of the community. The authors' identify five overwhelming concerns of the entirety of the community, "staying alive, having a good time, praising God, getting ahead, and advancing the race." The final section of the book is a note by the sociology professor, W. Lloyd Warner, on the book's methodology.^[4]

The book had its origins in a research project conceived by Warner at the University of Chicago with assistance from Cayton. With eventual government and other funding, twenty graduate students between 1935 and 1940, including Drake, worked as primary researchers. As many as 200 were employed as investigators, typists, and copyists of various field reports.^[5] Cayton was familiar with the high society of the repectable, and not-so-respectable, black elite. While Drake became intimately familiar with various voluntary organizations, working, and lower class elements. After the project was completed, Warner thought is might be turned into a book for the university's academic press, but Cayton thought it would get a wider readership with a commercial publisher. Drake wrote most the chapters of the book, while Cayton produced the remainder, and Warner, Cayton, and Drake acted as reviewers and editors. The publisher Harcourt, wanted Wright for the introduction, and Cayton, who knew Wright, was able to get him.

In the American Sociological Review, Samuel Strong wrote, "[t]he style of the volume alternates between systematic analysis, literary excursions, and journalistic protest writing. In spite any critical observations one may direct against this book, it represents a real contribution to the literature . . ."^[4] The reviewer for The Journal of Politics , Rosalind Lepawsky, noted the breadth of the book but found it confusing, and thought it was missing an emphasis on psychology and would benefit from a more popular treatment.^[6] Carter Woodson in The Journal of Negro History, found the book a creditworthy and commendable effort. ^[7]

The book was expanded in later editions in the 1950's and 60's. It has been re-published by the University of Chicago Press in 1993 and 2015.

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