Megan Novotney Normal Community West High School

Arnold Hirsch, in Making the Second Ghetto: Race & Housing in Chicago 1940 1960, argues that the racial segregation Chicago was orchestrated by various government agencies, civic organizations, private enterprises, and politicians. He carefully documents both the explicit and subversive measures used to "warehouse" poor African Americans into public housing projects and essentially isolate them from educational, political, and economic opportunities. This book is both an enlightening and disturbing look methods white Chicagoans, from various neighborhoods, ethnicities, and socioeconomic backgrounds, sought to insulate themselves from the African American population.

This book is especially well documented, but can at times become mundane and tedious. Hirsh seems to have left no stone unturned in his attempt to shed light on the racist beliefs and tendencies that drove politicians, university leaders, and businessmen to undertake measures to "conserve" and "renew" the city. In fact, this book includes 72 pages of notes for documentation. The amount and scale of Hirsch's evidence can frustrate the reader. It can also be difficult to follow his discussion of various civic organizations identified primarily by their acronyms (ex. CHA, CHR, SECC, HPKCC etc ... ).

Perhaps the most striking features of this book are the visual images woven throughout the text. Some of the photographs document the poverty, housing conditions, and racial strife of the time period. The maps demonstrate the extent of the segregation and the quality of the housing opportunities available to African Americans. These images supplement the description, analysis, and commentary provided by Hirsch.

This book could easily be incorporated into a high school social studies curriculum. History students could read excerpts of this book and then to compare and contrast the effects of de facto and de jure segregation in an argumentative essay. Geography students could examine the long term effects these public housing policies have had on the current distribution of poverty and racial characteristics in Chicago and draft a new policy intended to lessen income disparity and racial segregation that remains in city today.

Making the Second Ghetto: Race & Housing in Chicago 1940 1960 is an excellent study of how racism fueled the urban renewal effort generated in the years following WW II. I highly recommend this book to other history and social studies instructors and encourage them to find meaningful ways to incorporate it into their teaching. I would suggest, however, that instructors carefully select short excerpts for instructional use.

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