Research Catalog

Title

Family properties : race, real estate, and the exploitation of Black urban America / Beryl Satter.

Author

Satter, Beryl, 1959-

Publication

New York : Metropolitan Books, 2009.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

495 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations; 25 cm

Summary

Part family story and part urban history, this work is a landmark investigation of segregation and urban decay in Chicago, and in cities across the nation. The "promised land" for thousands of Southern blacks, postwar Chicago quickly became the most segregated city in the North, the site of the nation's worst ghettos and the target of Martin Luther King Jr.'s first campaign beyond the South. In this book, the author identifies the true causes of the city's black slums and the ruin of urban neighborhoods throughout the country. It is not, as some have argued, black pathology, the culture of poverty, or white flight, but a widespread and institutionalized system of legal and financial exploitation. This is an account of a city in crisis; unscrupulous lawyers, slumlords, and speculators are pitched against religious reformers, community organizers, and an impassioned attorney who launched a crusade against the profiteers, the author's father, Mark J. Satter. At the heart of the struggle stand the black migrants who, having left the South with its legacy of sharecropping, suddenly find themselves caught in a new kind of debt peonage. The author shows the interlocking forces at work in their oppression: the discriminatory practices of the banking industry; the federal policies that created the country's shameful "dual housing market" ; the economic anxieties that fueled white violence; and the tempting profits to be made by preying on the city's most vulnerable population. This tale of racism and real estate, politics and finance, will forever change our understanding of the forces that transformed urban America.--[Provided by publisher.].

Subject

• Satter, Mark J., 1916-1965
• 1900-1999
• African Americans > Housing > History > Illinois > Chicago > 20th century
• Discrimination in housing > Illinois > Chicago > History > 20th century
• Housing policy > Illinois > Chicago > History > 20th century
• African Americans > Illinois > Chicago > Social conditions > 20th century
• African Americans > Relations with Jews
• Lawyers > Illinois > Chicago > Biography
• Landlords > Illinois > Chicago > Biography
• Noirs américains > Logement > Histoire > Illinois > Chicago > 20e siècle
• Discrimination dans le logement > Illinois > Chicago > Histoire > 20e siècle
• Logement > Politique gouvernementale > Histoire > Illinois > Chicago > 20e siècle
• Noirs américains > Illinois > Chicago > Conditions sociales > 20e siècle
• Noirs américains > Relations avec les Juifs
• Locateurs > Illinois > Chicago > Biographies
• African Americans > Housing
• African Americans > Social conditions
• Discrimination in housing
• Housing policy
• Landlords
• Lawyers
• Race relations
• Social conditions
• Rassendiskriminierung
• Wohnungspolitik
• Zwarten
• Huisvesting
• Discriminatie (sociologie)
• Sociale aspecten
• Chicago (Ill.) > Social conditions > 20th century
• Chicago (Ill.) > Race relations > History > 20th century
• Illinois > Chicago
• Chicago, Ill
• Chicago (Ill.)
• Verenigde Staten
• Schwarze

Genre/Form

• Biography
• Biographies.
• History.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 385-470) and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Awards (note)

• Liberty Legacy Foundation Award, 2010

Contents

The story of my father -- Jewish Lawndale -- The noose around Black Chicago -- Justice in Chicago -- Reform--Illinois-style -- The liberal moment and the death of a radical -- King in Chicago -- The story of a building -- Organizing Lawndale -- The big holdout -- The federal trials.

ISBN

• 9780805076769
• 080507676X
• 9780805091427
• 0805091424

LCCN

• 2008033005
• 99932509689

OCLC

• 237018885
• SCSB-12909621

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library