When I first came from Mississipi, I was so young and ignorant. But I was freer you know? (Lucy Jefferson, 52)
Viewing the inhabitants of a single city, Chicago, as a microcosm of the nation at large, Division Street chronicles the thoughts and feelings of some seventy people from widely varying backgrounds in terms of class, race, and personal history. From a mother and son who migrated from Appalachia to a Native American boilerman, from a streetwise ex–gang leader to a liberal police officer, from the poorest African Americans to the richest socialites, these unique and often intimate first-person accounts form a multifaceted collage that defies any simple stereotype of America. -The New Press
A radio documentary about mayor Harold, brought to you by the -- arguably -- best (English) radio show on the planet: "This American Life", WBEZ (that's Zeee), Chicago.
Bridgeport, safely separated from surrounding South Side suburbs, by the freeways:
"There
is Chicago that lives in the minds of young people all through the
Middle West...A Chicago that exists by virtue of their aspiration and
their need, that begins to die with their first sight of the town" -
Floyd Dell (1913) , as per Spears (2005).
Timothy B. Spears (2005) in Chicago Dreaming, explores the influence of "Midwestern" immigration on Chicago. Through the eyes
of novelists, poets, journalists and cartoonists of the time. Taking the road less traveled, Spears highlights, the allure of the city by the lake to Midwestern/American dreamers, and the influence of provincialism on the formation of the "multiethnic metropolis", of Chicago, an it's literary culture.
"...They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I
have seen your painted women under the gas lamps
luring the farm boys...", Chicago, Carl Sandberg, 1916.
"FIND A WRITER WHO IS INDUBITALLY AN AMERICAN in every pulse-beat, snort and adenoid, an American who has something new and peculiarly American to say and who says it in an unmistakable American way and nine times out of ten you will find that he has some sort of connection with that gargantuan and inordinate abattoir by Lake Michigan." Borrowing a line from the acerbic H.L. Mencken, writer James Atlas sets the stage for the literary milieu in which novelist Saul Bellow would immerse himself. "Culture in Chicago was a marginal enterprise," Atlas writes. "Dominated by the brute forces of industry, by stockyards and farm-machinery works and automobile assembly lines, it was the city, in Sandburg's famous line, of 'big shoulders." Yet it was also true that Chicago writes crowded the shelves: Frank Norris's The Pit (1903), about wheat speculators on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade; Willa Cater's The Song of the Lark (1915), about a young lady from Nebraska who came to study music in the city; Upton Sinclair's The Jungle (1906), a raw depiction of the harsh existence of a Lithuanian immigrant family in the South Side stockyards; Theodore Dreiser's Frank Cowperwood trilogy, based on the career of Charles T. Yerkes, the Chicago railroad financier, the works of Sherwood Anderson. -Humanities, September/October 2000, Volume 21/Number 6
Teenager Arthur Agee sits
on the bed in his room in his home in suburban Chicago, reaches over and
picks up his pair of basketball shoes. It's 1988. On the sides and
backs of his battered sneakers, the teenager has written in black
capital letters "TUSS", the nickname of his idol, Isiah Thomas, a star
with NBA team the Detroit Pistons. "I drew on these with my name,"
says Agee, one of the subjects of the 1994 documentary Hoop Dreams,
which charts his unsuccessful five-year campaign to transform from high-school basketball phenomenon to NBA star.
- Ben Coady, 06/09/2010 "One Man Brand" Sports & Style.
"and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent. But a man's character is his fate, says Heraclitus, and in the end there isn't any way to disguise the nature of the knocks by acoustical work on the door or gloving the knuckles."
So starts Bellow's 1953 novel. Augie March, an everyman, blown about by fate, change and the modern "American city".
The Farm Security Administration (FSA) was created during the Great Depression in an attempt to address rural poverty. It had a small but highly influential photography programme, documenting, mainly, rural conditions during the period.
As legendary guitarist Robert Johnson put it, Chicago has been a “sweet home” for the blues. The most recognizable cultural signature this city has produced, Chicago blues has diverse and contradictory roots: African American migration from the South and the growth of the modern music industry; regional folk genius and ethnic entrepreneurial savvy. This rich sense of origin and history makes blues music such a celebrated civic resource, one that still shapes cultural and social practice throughout the Windy City.
The promise of jobs in the Chicago, coupled with racism and a lack of opportunity brought African Americans and their culture to Chicago. Chicago Blues is born as the the Delta Blues collides with the modern industrial city. Chess Records is in the thick of it, as Rock and Roll, and the modern music industry take their formative steps.
Formed by Jewish/Polish immigrants, Phil & Leonard and Chess, Chess Records ended up, with an impressive roster of artists (Willie Dixon, Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry, Howlin' Wolf and Jimmy rogers ...). Chess went on to inspire many future "white" Rock n' Rollers like Eric Clapton. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards traveled to Chicago to record some of the tracks of their second album 12x5 , in the Chess studios.
The story of Chess and Blues, is a classic American/Chicagoan story of Jewish immigrants, African American immigrants, their dreams, and the whole being much bigger and influential than anyone would have imagined. From just trying to make a buck, or just make it, in the shady nightclubs, where music draws in the crowd that will buy the booze. This is the next chapter in the story after the speakeasies, gangsters and Jazz. Modern popular rock would not be what it became in the 1980's and still is were it not for Chess and Chicago Blues.
With the Great migration and the closure of Storyville, the centre of jazz moved to Chicago. With the prohibition, the market demanded alcohol, and gangsters like Capone were only too happy to oblige.
As the roaring twenties rolled on, in an very American market oriented fashion, speakeasies became the major distribution points of illegal alcohol. The mobsters needing entertainment for their clubs became patrons of Jazz.
Another chapter is written in Chicagos history, and gangs and gangsters are now forever associated with Chicago. The light and dark side of the American dream again connect in Chicago.
