1941: Chicago's South Side

April 8, 2017 8:32 PM

In 1941, Farm Security Administration photographer Edwin Rosskam visited Chicago together with novelist Richard Wright and photographed the black residents of the segregated South Side. These images were later used in Wright's book Twelve Million Black Voices. (Many of those living on the South Side had taken part in the Great Migration from the South to the Northern industrial cities.)
posted by praemunire (11 comments total)

Looking sharp, most of them. People's ability to dress well even in in difficult conditions and with limited means always impresses me.
posted by Harald74 at 10:43 PM on April 8, 2017 [2 favorites]

What are the boys in this images holding and looking up through?
posted by Harald74 at 10:45 PM on April 8, 2017 [2 favorites]

Cool. I'll be visiting Chicago in two weeks; my first visit. Still looking for more black history sites to check out while I'm there...
posted by latkes at 10:45 PM on April 8, 2017

Latkes - check out the exhibits at the Chicago Cultural Center if you are interested in black history. Here's their website. They currently have an exhibit on about public art that includes a recreation of the "Wall of Respect," and an amazing exhibit of Eugene Eda's Doors for Malcolm X College.
posted by mai at 11:02 PM on April 8, 2017 [2 favorites]

The hats. Men, women, boys and girls all wearing hats. The line of children outside the theater with their hats and the saddle shoes.
posted by AugustWest at 12:17 AM on April 9, 2017 [2 favorites]

AugustWest
Back in the day...my uncle had a store in downtown New Haven, Ct., and sold ONLY hats for men. Had sign over entrance: When Buying A Hat, Use Your Head.
Back then, Danbury, Ct hats were the big industry for the city, and if you were a salesman, you made sure never to go there without wearing a hat.
posted by Postroad at 9:12 AM on April 9, 2017 [1 favorite]

Always liked Richard Wright. He had so much to say.
posted by Melismata at 10:01 AM on April 9, 2017

I was thinking it might be some ill-advised means of viewing a solar eclipse, but apparently neither of the two eclipses in 1941 were visible in North America.
posted by praemunire at 11:13 AM on April 9, 2017 [1 favorite]

Re: the boys looking through something. There is a description with photo that says: Boys playing that they are shooting machine guns at a passing aeroplane, Black Belt, Chicago, Illinois
posted by beccaj at 3:43 PM on April 9, 2017 [1 favorite]

I wondered if they might be some sort of gunsight, minus the gun!
posted by postel's law at 8:46 PM on April 9, 2017

I was just reading yesterday about Milt Hinton, the great jazz bassist, delivering vegetables in Chicago, having taken part in the Great Migration from the South, on just such - lethal in winter - wooden steps as those in the 4th image from the end.

Thanks, praemunire!
posted by On the Corner at 2:56 AM on April 12, 2017