Andrew Wiese, A Place of Their Own

University of Chicago Press, 2004. 422 pages, hardcover. $37.50

More than one-third of African-Americans now live in suburbs. Many people assume that black migration to the suburbs began with a recent exodus from the inner city, or with the iconic suburban migration following the Second World War. In A Place of Their Own, Andrew Wiese explodes these assumptions, showing how the movement of black Americans into the suburban reaches of the U.S. actuallybegan in the early 20th century. Wiese, an associate professor of history at San Diego State University, details how black suburban enclaves – particularly pre-war ones – were not only hidden from the general population at the time, but also from most historical accounts of suburbia written since then. This history desperately needs to be told, he argues, because we cannot understand racial identity without understanding the places that help shape that identity. 

The first three chapters of Wiese’s book discuss black suburbanization chronologically: prior to 1940, the post-war Great Migration, and the post-Civil Rights Movement era. He reiterates that in each time period there were black settlements in suburbs around nearly every city from coast to coast, from Pasadena, California, to Westchester County, New York. Prior to 1940, most African-American suburbs were predominately blue-collar communities in which residents worked and lived. On the outskirts of cities such as Chicago, Detroit, and Philadelphia, chic residential suburbs began to develop along rail and trolley lines. The growth of industry and commerce in the cities created suburban prosperity, which in turn generated small communities of servants who lived in the huge homes of whites. Blacks moved to take advantage of the opportunity presented by both these domestic servant jobs and new suburban industrial areas. Both groups of black suburbanites – the blue-collar workers and domestic servants – helped develop black institutions of suburbia: churches, schools, and neighborhood organizations. Some of the communities they formed were classic suburbs with their own municipal governments, such as Chagrin Falls Park near Cleveland. Wiese classifies other communities such as Markham and Robbins, Illinois (which an orthodox definition of suburbia would exclude as merely “the outskirts of town”) as embryonic suburbs, since they later incorporated, established governments, and adopted zoning codes.

Black suburbanites shared the American dream of owning a home, but their sense of the suburbs was different than their white neighbors because of how they intended to use their homes. Blacks brought with them the idea of a “piece of the country,” and for both nostalgic and economic reasons sought areas where they could grow crops and keep livestock. Their white neighbors usually weren’t sympathetic to the idea of large gardens with rows of crops, much less animals. When the first black suburbs abutted those of whites, each side hoped to retain its own view of suburban life, reinforcing other racial divides. After the Second World War, however, the traditionally black view of suburban living largely vanished, and suburban development for both races flourished with the establishment of subdivisions.

The remaining chapters of the book, on black suburbanization following the Second World War and through the Civil Rights Era, revisit episodes and historical events that are far better known in American history. Wiese contributes a new angle, discussing how black Americans worked to fulfill spatial needs and desires while fighting for social and economic equality.

Wiese looks not only at suburban history, but at how that history has been portrayed, challenging the generally accepted definitions of “suburb” and “suburbia.” He points out that most suburban historiography, well established as a field for over thirty years, assumes that suburbs are white, middle-class, affluent, and elite. Kenneth Jackson argued in Crabgrass Frontier that the suburbs meant homeownership, low population density, and middle-class commuting – but left out the black homeowners and commuters. Robert Fishman, author of Bourgeois Utopias, saw suburbia as inextricably intertwined with a bourgeois (read: white) culture. Wiese acknowledges that neither historian is entirely unmindful of the diversity of American suburbia, but points out that in common parlance, “‘suburb’ is still likely to be understood to mean a white community.”

Wiese founds his thesis on closely examined census data over the last century, supplemented with anecdotes collected from interviews and biographies. He talks with the family of Jackie Robinson, for instance, about Robinson’s upbringing in suburban Pasadena and his experiences as an adult in New York seeking suburban living for his children. Wiese also incorporates magazine and newspaper articles and academic studies. The book is well footnoted but somewhat frustrating in not including a bibliography. Another quibble: the maps that show the geography of settlement are not particularly advanced in today’s world of Geographic Information Systems technology. On the other hand, the reproductions of rarely seen advertisements for black subdivisions add to the volume immensely.

Andrew Wiese has made powerful inroads into challenging the myths of suburban development and the role of black Americans in that history. A Place of Their Own is a must-read for anyone interested in a complete history of American cities and suburbs.