An expansive introduction to Chicago's great cultural explosionThis collection comprehensively explores the Black Chicago Renaissance, a creative movement that emerged from the crucible of rigid segregation in Chicago's ''Black Belt'' from the 1930s through the 1960s. Heavily influenced by the Harlem Renaissance and the Chicago Renaissance of white writers, its participants were invested in political activism and social change as much as literature, art, and aesthetics. This volume covers many important writers such as Richard Wright, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Lorraine Hansberry as well as cultural products such as black newspapers, music, and theater. The book includes individual entries by experts on each subject; a discography and filmography that highlight important writers, musicians, films, and cultural presentations; and an introduction that relates the Harlem Renaissance, the white Chicago Renaissance, the black Chicago Renaissance, and the Black Arts Movement.Contributors are Robert Butler, Robert H. Cataliotti, Maryemma Graham, James C. Hall, James L. Hill, Michael Hill, Lovalerie King, Lawrence Jackson, Angelene Jamison-Hall, Keith Leonard, Lisbeth Lipari, Bill V. Mullen, Patrick Naick, William R. Nash, Charlene Regester, Kimberly Ruffin, Elizabeth Schultz, Joyce Hope Scott, James Smethurst, Kimberly M. Stanley, Kathryn Waddell Takara, Steven C. Tracy, Zoe Trodd, Alan Wald, Jamal Eric Watson, Donyel Hobbs Williams, Stephen Caldwell Wright, and Richard Yarborough.
Introduction; Robert S. Abbott; William A. Attaway; Claude A. Barnett; Henry Lowington Blakely, II; Aldon Bland; Edward Bland; Marita Bonner; Gwendolyn Brooks; Frank London Brown; Alice Browning; Dan Burley; Margaret Danner; Frank Marshall Davis; Richard Durham; Lorraine Hansberry; Fenton Johnson; John Johnson; Marian Minus; Willard Motley; Gordon Parks; John Sengstacke; Margaret Walker
''A genuinely useful reference and inspirational sourcebook. Tracy's selection of Chicago-connected writers intelligently guides us through the understudied territory of 'post-Harlem' African American literature.''--William J. Maxwell, editor of Claude McKay's Complete Poems''A most important reference book on a subject that is sure to get increasing attention for years to come. The volume will serve as a foundational source of information and perspective on the major figures of the Black Chicago Renaissance.''--Amritjit Singh, coeditor of The Collected Writings of Wallace Thurman: A Harlem Renaissance Reader
