Content provided in partnership with
Black Housing, White Finance: African American Housing And Home Ownership In Evanston, Illinois, Before 1940 - Statistical Data Included
Journal of Social History, Winter, 1999 by Andrew Wiese
In addition to the availability of vacant land where African Americans could build new homes, scattered evidence suggests that white elites in other suburbs participated in the process of black home building much as in Evanston. In Pasadena, California for instance, African Americans, as well as Mexicans, Japanese, and working-class Anglos began building and moving into new homes in the northwest section of the city after the turn of the century, and by 1920, as many as 60 percent of African Americans in Pasadena were home owners. [82] During the 1910s and 1920s, a range of white and black contractors built new homes for black families in this neighborhood, and a cursory examination of property records suggests that local whites loaned money to blacks for the purchase of housing in Pasadena. Oral tradition in the city also indicates that wealthy whites occasionally built or financed homes for their black domestic workers, and the city's premier black home builder before World War Two, William Harrison, appar ently had sound credit and connections in Pasadena's white community. [83] Given the difficulty of purchasing a home without credit, the wide range of African American-owned homes in Pasadena and suburbs like it is strong evidence by itself that mortgage financing was available from one source or another. Analysis of property records in individual suburbs is the only way to establish with certainty who lent money to whom and on what terms. Even so, the surprising pattern of home building and home finance for African Americans in Evanston appears to have been a national phenomenon. For historians, these findings pose a challenge to examine suburban housing records in much greater detail and geographical scope.
- Most Popular Articles in Reference
- The importance of understanding organizational culture
- Credit card attitudes and behaviors of college students
- What factors attract foreign direct investment?
- Libraries Need Relationship Marketing - mutual interest marketing concept, ...
- How to set performance goals: employee reviews are more than annual critiques
- More »
Department of History
San Diego, CA 92182-8147
ENDNOTES
(1.) Caldonia Martin interview by Angela Jackson, 1972, transcript (Evanston Historical Society (EHS], Evanston, Illinois).
(2.) Roger Simon, "Housing and Services in an Immigrant Neighborhood: Milwaukee's 14th Ward," Journal of Urban History 2 (Aug. 1976): 435-458; Olivier Zunz, The Changing Face of Inequality: Urbanization, Industrial Development and immigrants in Detroit, 1880-1920 (Chicago, 1982); Henry L. Taylor Jr., "The Building of a Black Industrial Suburb: The Lincoln Heights, Ohio, Story," (PhD. diss., State University of New York at Buffalo, 1979); Richard Harris, "Working Class Home Ownership in the American Metropolis," Journal of Urban History 17 (Nov. 1990): 46-69; Richard Harris, "Self-Building in the Urban Housing Market," Economic Geography 67 (Jan. 1991): 1-21; Richard Harris, "American Suburbs: A Sketch of a New Interpretation," journal of Urban History 15 (1988): 98-103.
(3.) In 1940, the U.S. Bureau of the Census defined suburbs as the "thickly settled" districts adjacent to a central city or cities of 50,000 or more; however, the census bureau drew "metropolitan" limits using county boundaries. By this definition, there were 982,000 African Americans in southern suburbs in 1940, 468,000 in the North, and 32,000 in suburbs in the West. By contrast to 1,482,000 in suburbs, 4.4 million African Americans lived in central cities. Eighteenth Census of the United States: 1960, Selected Area Reports, SMSA's, Final Report PC(3)-1D (Washington, 1963), 3.
Find Research Guides for:
Find Featured Titles for: Technology
Most Popular Articles in Reference
- The importance of understanding organizational culture
- Credit card attitudes and behaviors of college students
- What factors attract foreign direct investment?
- Libraries Need Relationship Marketing - mutual interest marketing concept, ...
- How to set performance goals: employee reviews are more than annual critiques
- More »