Davarian L. Baldwin’s Chicago’s New Negroes: Modernity, the Great Migration, and Black Urban Life “examines the mass consumer marketplace as a crucial site of intellectual life” (pg. 5). Baldwin argues, “The popular arts and ideas that emerged from Chicago’s marketplace intellectual life in the interwar period were directly embedded within the social ‘chaos’ of the Great Migration, World War I, a series of race riots, and the combined economic and cultural race consciousness emerging all over the country and throughout the African Diaspora in the early twentieth century” (pg. 6).
Baldwin writes of the demographics of Chicago, “Within the public theater of the city, Chicago’s vice was centrally located in the Black Belt, while black men and women were predominantly relegated to the industrial roles of unskilled factory and service work and domestic labor. These urban social realities collapsed any widespread possibilities for the black acquisition of the desirable Victorian divisions between public/private, male/female, and producer/consumer” (pg. 30). He defines culture broadly, writing, “New settler ideology advocated hard work and encouraged social mobility through industrial labor but was also open to what scholar C. L. R. James later termed the ‘popular arts’ in ways that complicated old settler prescriptions about appropriate labor and leisure. James prophetically saw in the popular arts – films, comic strips, soap operas, detective novels, jazz and blues music – complex levels of creativity that reflected the masses’ desire for the same kind of autonomy and free association they wanted in the labor process” (pg. 41).
Turning to the role of gender and beauty products, Baldwin writes, “The ideological exchange expressed in the circulation of beauty-related products, advertisements, and social possibilities helped solidify this cultural formation as a key space within the marketplace intellectual life” (pg. 55). Further, “The process of adornment was part of a long struggle for various forms and spaces of personal agency that took on new political meanings during slavery and can be traced back to techniques of physical manipulation and enhancement partially derived from an African past” (pg. 61-62).
Examining movie-going, Baldwin writes, “The diversified leisure tastes or divergent expectations that black consumers brought to the theater tempered and even contested old settler prescriptions about what behaviors and viewing expectations were deemed appropriate and racially respectable” (pg. 93-94). Broadening his focus, Baldwin writes, “The social-structural makeup of leisure spaces, in terms of location and patronage, had a profound impact on the formation of race and class identities” (pg. 95). He continues, “Unlike the white ethnic nickelodeon, however, black amusements did not necessarily offer reprieve from the strict scrutiny of race reformers and their behavioral codes of respectability, because there were not many class-specific black vaudeville spaces” (pg. 105). Baldwin concludes of film, “Between pure entertainment and strict racial uplift, the black public sphere of film production, distribution, and exhibition offers an important window into the hearts and minds of Chicago’s New Negroes” (pg. 154).
Examining music, Baldwin writes, “The rise of gospel music in Chicago provided a counter-response to the supposedly more formalized New Negro spirituals project, highlighting a struggle over competing sacred expressions of black modernity. The music, the worship it inspired, and the spirited responses to its sonic force embody the untold story of Chicago’s New Negro experience” (pg. 157). Turning to sport, he argues, “The ‘sporting life’ public sphere within the larger marketplace intellectual life provided a relative autonomy where athletes, owners, and fans produced competing styles of bodily labor, along with new racial identifications on the field, in the front office, and in the stands” (pg. 195). Further, “The sporting sphere offered New Negro expressions of black ownership over body, behavior, and community through varying ideas about gender” (pg. 195).
Baldwin concludes, “The realm of mass consumer culture symbolized the push and pull of contestation and integration that marked the potential realities of democratic freedom. People continue to articulate personal and group visions, anxieties, fears, and desires through their consumption habits” (pg. 241). ( )