Many Black migrants faced discriminatory practices for higher wages, promotions, jobs outside of the manual and domestic labor sectors, and the setting of quotas for how many Black workers would be hired. These inequitable practices and the eventual tensions that arose between ethnic-whites, Mexicans, and Black migrants over jobs and employment advancement were exacerbated as competition over job-space increased. While wages were not on par with ethnic-whites in the city, Black migrants were still offered higher and steadier wages than sharecropping and low-wage agricultural jobs in the South (Drake and Cayton 1945). Manual, domestic labor, and clerical and sales work represented a steady working-class position for Black families with stable …show more content…
This rerouting also stemmed from the displacement of poor Black residents and the construction of public housing due to urban renewal efforts. My grandparents rented their first apartment in Chicago on the West Side at 32nd W. Monroe after my grandmother arrived in 1958 with my mother to rejoin my grandfather. My grandfather explained that it was almost impossible to find decent housing on the South Side due to overcrowding, exorbitant rent costs, dilapidated housing, and the challenges that came with moving into surrounding areas. Some of the Black house kids shared stories about their parents and grandparents who also arrived on the West Side during the second wave after 1940 including Duane’s father and grandmother while Todd and Ray—who were born on the West Side—stressed their family’s deep roots in East Garfield Park and West Garfield Park; both community areas on the West Side. Miss Priss offered similar sentiments about her family’s history on the West Side as …show more content…
Braxton’s family initially arrived on the South Side, lived on the West Side, and moved back to the South Side in later years. He stated: “My mother’s parents moved to Bronzeville first, then to Central Park and Roosevelt, and finally to Finn Town on 89th and Normal.”
While I do situate the West Side within the context of the Black Belt to get at the ways in which the Black Belt—as a metaphor for spatializing Blackness—relocated— it is here that I shift my attention to the containment of Blackness on the South Side for the remainder of this chapter. As I stated in the introduction, this is not to dismiss nor discount the history of a wide variety of Black Chicagoans particularly those on the West Side including Black house kids like Todd and Ray. The containment and spatialization of Blackness penetrated the West Side in similar and distinct ways as the South Side that also deserve close attention. However, the control over mobilized Blackness on the South Side set forth the geographies of house coupled with the South Side as the enclosed area where the Black gay males and Black middle-class kids who birthed the first and second iteration of house resided. My focus on the South Side further helps to situate the linkages of house