House for the Struggle

E. James West is a research associate in American history at Northumbria University. He is the author of Ebony Magazine and Lerone Bennett Jr.: Popular Black History in Postwar America.

"A well-conceived, effectively researched, and fascinating book." --Choice "A House for the Struggle is an eye-opening, compelling read in which West shows that Black press buildings on Chicago’s South Side were symbolic of community pride, unity and success, as well as crucial meeting places in the fight for Black autonomy and civil rights." --NewCity "A fresh and engaging work that explores how the design of a built environment can often be a destiny. " --Chicago Review of Books "A House for the Struggle breaks new ground by assessing Chicago's Black newspapers and magazines together, and by connecting them to the buildings and neighborhoods where they operated. E. James West reminds us that journalists with national reach and tremendous ambition still faced the frustrations and indignities of life in a segregated metropolis, and he helps us to understand Chicago as the true capital of the twentieth-century Black press."--Julia Guarneri, author of Newsprint Metropolis: City Papers and the Making of Modern Americans "A House for the Struggle provides fresh insights into the history of the Black press in Chicago. Through the lens of the built environment, West's compelling narrative takes us inside the newsrooms of the Defender, Ebony, and other rival publications--from their humble origins to the height of their power. But what makes this book extraordinary is how West examines these shifting Black spaces of journalism as crucial sites of intellectual labor, ideological debate, and enterprise that profoundly shaped Chicago urban history, Black identity, and protest politics in twentieth century America."--Erik S. Gellman, author of Troublemakers: Chicago Freedom Struggles through the Lens of Art Shay "A fresh and engaging work that explores how the design of a built environment can often be a destiny. " --Chicago Review of Books "West's A House for the Struggle is a well-written and thought-provoking chronicle of urban, media, African American, labor, and cultural history. The connections between political, spatial, economic, and cultural institutions were unique and other cities could model a similar investigation on the local built environment of African American industry." --H-Net Reviews

• Acknowledgments viiIntroduction 11 A Card Table and a Kitchen Chair 212 A Monument to Negro Enterprise 493 A Building on a Front Street 814 A Meeting Place for All the People 1155 A House for the Struggle 1476 A Poem in Marble and Glass 181Conclusion 213Notes 221Bibliography 259Index 273