Popular Fronts: Chicago and African-American Cultural Politics, 1935-46

Description

In a stunning revision of radical politics during the Popular Front period, Bill Mullen redefines the cultural renaissance of the 1930s and early 1940s as the fruit of an extraordinary rapprochement between African-American and white members of the U.S. Left struggling to create a new American Negro culture. A dynamic reappraisal of a critical moment in American cultural history, Popular Fronts includes a major reassessment of the politics of Richard Wright's critical reputation, a provocative reading of class struggle in Gwendolyn Brooks's A Street in Bronzeville, and in-depth examinations of the institutions that comprised Chicago's black popular front: The Chicago Defender, the period's leading black newspaper; Negro Story, the first magazine devoted to publishing short stories by and about black Americans; and the WPA-sponsored South Side Community Art Center. Contents Acknowledgments Introduction 1 Chicago and the Politics of Reputation: Richard Wright’s Long Black Shadow 2 Turning White Space into Black Space: The Chicago Defender and the Creation of the Cultural Front 3 Artists in Uniform: The South Side Community Art Center and the Defense of Culture 4 Worker-Writers in Bronzeville: Negro Story and the African-American “Little” Magazine 5 Genre Politics/Cultural Politics: The Short Story and the New Black Fiction Market 6 Engendering the Cultural Front: Gwendolyn Brooks, Black Women, and Class Struggle in Poetry 7 American Daughters, Fifth Columns, and Lonely Crusades: Purge, Emigration, and Exile in Chicago Postscript: Bronzeville Today Appendix Notes Index