Jim Crow Nostalgia: Reconstructing Race in Bronzeville. Michelle Boyd.

University of
Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN, 2008. 211 pp., notes, references, index, $18.95.

Reviewed by Matthew Anderson, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Chicago’s historical South Side neighborhood of Bronzeville, once the site of America’s
largest concentration of public housing and an intensely impoverished landscape, now experiences
significant redevelopment accompanied by black gentrification. Michelle Boyd chronicles the recent
revitalization of this historical African-American neighborhood through ethnographic research
conducted primarily during the late 1990s. The book examines the mutually constitutive relationship
between contemporary black identity and this ongoing redevelopment process in Bronzeville. To
Boyd (p. xiii), the reimagining of the black urban experience that accompanies this redevelopment
process is significant because “it is the basis for a specific understanding of contemporary black
identity… Understanding the emergence and political significance of this particular racial identity
is the aim of this book.” Adopting a constructionist approach to race and identity, Boyd carefully
interrogates the complexities of the intersection of race and class in contemporary neoliberal times.
In the process, and where the book shines, Boyd offers a critical deconstruction of the dominant but
contested local growth narrative that emerged as the neighborhood’s socio-spatial transformation
gathered steam during the 1990s, exposing the class-based interests and power relations operating
behind it.
The book is divided into two parts. Chapters 1 and 2 excavate the conflicted history of race and
politics in Bronzeville through the 20th century by drawing on a wealth of historical documentation.
The remainder of the book (chapters 3, 4, and 5) presents the ethnography of the current period
(post-1990) and critical analysis of the contemporary narrative and redevelopment process. To
Boyd, the early decades of the 20th century are imagined as a time of romanticized nostalgia by
community organizations, developers, and city planning officials in order to promote a class-based
redevelopment. However, this nostalgic narrative is seen as an acute mutation of the actual historical
record. Specifically, it represents a politically charged perspective of the neighborhood’s history
that strategically ignores important and contradictory elements. As Boyd convincingly illuminates
in chapter 1, this time period (1870–1950) is characterized more by unbridled racial discrimination,
intra- and inter-racial political tension, and outright violence, as opposed to the homogeneous and
rosy image of “vibrancy” and racial harmony that is propagated today.
Chapter 2 (1950–1990) chronicles the turbulent civil rights period, Chicago machine politics, and
the rise of a new wave of black civic elites in the 1970s and 1980s. Much of this period, including
the brutal economic devastation of this neighborhood and a profoundly racially discriminatory
process of suburbanization, is conveniently silenced within this nostalgic growth narrative. Rather,
the sole explanations of the community’s downfall are ultimately attributed to the purportedly
“culturally pathologic” Black poor in addition to desegregation policies that led to suburban flight
of the Black middle class and the decision to concentrate the majority of the city’s public housing
in Bronzeville.
Chapter 3 chronicles the rise of the current narrative and the branding of Bronzeville as a cultural
artifact and a site for revitalization. The early 20th century is conjured up as the high point of African-
American culture and life in the city; a period of social and economic vibrancy, self-sustainability,
racial solidarity, and the origins of a rich cultural heritage (i.e., the era of famous blues and jazz bars).
These were the benefits of racial segregation, according to the narrative. However, as Boyd reveals,
this current narrative, originally nurtured by local Black middle-class homeowners and community
organizations to advance their interests, has significantly altered the meaning and “spatial imaginary”
of this urban neighborhood. And this, combined with demolition of the neighborhood’s once vast
supply of public housing, has consequently led to the seizure of this racial history and identity by city
elites and real estate capital. Bronzeville, once the epitome of inner-city poverty and gang violence,
is now reconfigured as a site suitable for gentrification.

143

Urban Geography, 2011, 32, 1, pp. 143–144. DOI: 10.2747/0272-3638.32.1.143

Copyright © 2011 by Bellwether Publishing, Ltd. All rights reserved.
144 BOOK REVIEW

Chapter 4 focuses on the politics of how this particular history and racial identity is framed
and contested. Although this narrative is presented as definitive and representative of the entire
“community,” it is ultimately revealed as a specific and politically motivated version of this history
that is not shared by all residents, and is constantly under construction through contestation and
conflict among city officials, developers, local businesses, and residents. Chapter 5 interrogates the
problems that class-based identities present for theories of racial group interests and “collective”
notions of racial identity. In short, intra-racial class conflict saturates this gentrifying neighborhood
and sits rather uneasily with the monolithic racial identity nurtured by this class-biased and power
laden growth narrative.
While Boyd speaks primarily to political scientists, the book has significant relevance for critical
urban geography and socio-spatial theory. Boyd is remarkably sensitive to the intimate relationship
between identity and social space. Specifically, the meanings and values that are assigned to
particular spaces are significant for how people who inhabit those spaces constitute their identities.
However, while the book is empirically rich, it lacks theoretical development. This, however, only
minimally detracts from the book’s central contributions. Boyd does critique prevailing political
theory and argues that political scientists who study race should “expand beyond our own discipline
and draw on the rich methods and inquiry that mark the other social sciences” (p. 157). And “most
troubling,” Boyd laments, is how the majority of survey work in political science remains reliant on
“reified notions of race and racial identity, which cannot incorporate the recent conceptual advances
of other disciplines” (ibid.).
Boyd concludes with an appeal for political scientists to seriously consider more qualitative
and interpretive methods in the study of race and its relationship to power. This appeal should be
applauded and taken seriously. The book represents one of three significant ethnographies, along
with those by Mary Pattillo (2007) and Derek Hyra (2008), conducted on this area of south Chicago
in recent years. While each account features a slightly different focus, Boyd is perhaps the most
critical and detailed. The book stands as an invaluable resource for anyone studying the history and
current redevelopment of this South Side Chicago neighborhood.

REFERENCES

Hyra, D., 2008, The New Urban Renewal: The Economic Transformation of Harlem and Bronzeville.
Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Pattillo, M., 2007, Black on the Block: The Politics of Race and Class in the City. Chicago, IL:
University of Chicago Press.