ABOUT THIS BOOK

Other historians have tended to treat black urban life mainly in relation to the ghetto experience, but in Black Milwaukee, Joe William Trotter Jr. offers a new perspective that complements yet also goes well beyond that approach. The blacks in Black Milwaukee were not only ghetto dwellers; they were also industrial workers. The process by which they achieved this status is the subject of Trotter’s ground-breaking study.

This second edition features a new preface and acknowledgments, an essay on African American urban history since 1985, a prologue on the antebellum and Civil War roots of Milwaukee’s black community, and an epilogue on the post-World War II years and the impact of deindustrialization, all by the author. Brief essays by four of Trotter’s colleagues--William P. Jones, Earl Lewis, Alison Isenberg, and Kimberly L. Phillips--assess the impact of the original Black Milwaukee on the study of African American urban history over the past twenty years.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Joe William Trotter Jr. is Mellon Professor of History and director of the Center for African American Urban Studies and Economy (CAUSE) at Carnegie Mellon University. He is also past president of the Labor and Working Class History Association and the author of Coal, Class, and Color: Blacks in Southern West Virginia, 1915-32.

REVIEWS

"Trotter blazed new ground, courageously argued his thesis despite the skeptical eyes of non-Marxists, seamlessly connected local, urban, black, and labor history, and skillfully recounted the ways that black Milwaukeeans forged their own lives. . . . The second edition is well worth reading."--H-Urban

"Thanks to its original methodology, outstanding research and meticulous attention to detail Black Milwaukee has become a seminal work in labour history."--Left History

“This highly readable book is a classic, and rightly so, in the interconnected areas of labor, black, and urban history.”--Labor Studies Journal

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents
 Preface
 Acknowledgements
 Preface to the Second Edition
 Acknowledgments to the Second Edition
 Prologue: The Antebellum and Civil War Roots of Milwaukee's Black
 Community
 Part One: Introduction
 Chapter 1. Common Laborers and Domestic and Personal Service
 Workers in an Industrializing Economy, 1870-1914
 Part Two: Process and Significance of Proletarianization, 1915-32
 Chapter 2. Migration, Industrial Jobs, and Housing, 1915-32
 Chapter 3. Emergence of the New Middle Class
 Chapter 4. Race Relations, Politics, and Institutions
 Part Three: Depression, Worl0d War II, and the Precarious Nature
 of Black Urban-Industrial Working Class Formation, 1933-45
 Chapter 5. Depression, World War II, and the Struggle for Fair
 Employment in Defense Industries, 1933-45
 Chapter 6. Race, Class, and Politics during the Depression and
 World War II
 Chapter 7. Proletarianization of Afro-Americans in Milwaukee,
 1915-45: A Comparative Perspective
 Appendixes
 1. Occupations of Milwaukee Blacks, 1880
 2. Black Occupations in Milwaukee, 1900
 3. Selected Black Occupations in Milwaukee, 1910
 4. Black Occupations in Milwaukee, 1920
 5
 5. Black Occupations in Milwaukee, 1930
 6. Black Occupations in Milwaukee, 1940
 7. Afro-American Urban History: A Critique of the Literature
 Epilogue: Reflections on African American Life in Late Twentieth-
 Century Milwaukee
 State of the Field
 Joe William Trotter, Jr.
 Race and Class in Urban History
 William P. Jones
 How Black Milwaukee Forever Changed the Study of African American
 Urban History
 Earl Lewis
 Urban History since Black Milwaukee
 Alison Isenberg
 Black Milwaukee, African American Migration Studies, and Recent
 U.S. Labor History
 Kimberley L. Phillips
 Bibliographical Essay
 Contributors
 Index
 Illustrations follow page 000