Black Milwaukee: The Making of an Industrial Proletariat, 1915-45

336 Pages·1985·51.94 MB·English

by  Joe William Trotter Jr.

BLACK
MILWAUKEE
BLACK MILWAUKEE
The Making of an Industrial
Proletariat, 1915-45
JOE WILLIAM TROTTER, JR.
Other historians have tended to treat
black urban life mainly in relation to
the ghetto experience, but Trotter of-
fers a new perspective which comple-
ments yet also goes well beyond that
approach. The blacks in Black Milwaukee
were not only ghetto dwellers — they
were also industrial workers. The pro-
cess by which they achieved this status
is the subject of Trotter’s ground-break-
ing study.
Trotter shows how, in contrast to con-
ventional Marxist notions, the “prole-
tarianization” of black Milwaukee did
not cause any fundamental loss of black
autonomy. The making of this working
class was almost exclusively a shift up-
ward into factory jobs — away from such
low-status positions as southern rural
sharecroppers and northern common la-
borers, domestics, and personal service
workers. Although these jobs were at
the bottom of the urban economy, blacks
were able to forge a distinctive support
system that helped them survive the
harsh realities of both the industrial
experience and interracial conflict.
Black Milwaukee offers several other sig-
nificant contributions. First, Milwaukee,
which was led by a socialist mayor be-
tween 1916 and 1940, provides a unique
opportunity to view black urban life
within a socialist context. Second, Trot-
ter’s focus on a metropolitan area with
one of the smallest black populations
among major U.S. cities sharpens our
overall image of blacks in the urban
North. Moreover, Trotter deals with a
period seldom covered in other histories
of black urban communities, a period
which saw the rapid expansion of the
industrial work force during two world
BOSTON
PUBLIC
LIBRARY

BLACKS IN THE NEW WORLD
August Meier, Series Editor
A list of books in the series appears at the end of this book.
Black Milwaukee
Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2017 with funding from
Kahle/Austin Foundation
https://archive.org/details/blackmilwaukeemaOOtrot
Black Milwaukee
The Making of an
Industrial Proletariat,
1915-45
Joe William Trotter, Jr.
University of Illinois Press Urbana and Chicago
Publication of this book was supported in part by
a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
©1985 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
Manufactured in the United States of America
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Trotter, Joe William, 1945-
Black Milwaukee.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Afro-Americans — Employment — Wisconsin — Milwaukee
History. 2. Discrimination in employment —Wisconsin —
Milwaukee —History. 3. Race discrimination—Wisconsin—
Milwaukee —History. 4. Afro-Americans —Wisconsin —
Milwaukee — Social conditions—To 1964. I. Title.
HD8081.A65T76 1984 331.6'3'96073077595 84-83
ISBN 0-252-01124-4 (alk. paper)