Eric S. Wagner Kelvyn Park High School

Arnold R. Hirsch's book, Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago 1940-1960, delivers a stinging account of public housing and urban planning in the postwar era. Hirsch examines the conflict between working class whites and blacks over control of a changing urban landscape. The influences on urban planning exerted by key members of the business and real estate establishments are profiled in detail. The quandary that liberal academics found themselves in championing social justice in theory while at the same time assuring their own financial futures are deeply examined. Students that read this book will comprehend the differing influences exerted by working class ethnics, business interests and academic elites that combined to shape the physical and racial landscape of Chicago to the present day.

Hirsch does a great job of profiling the racial and financial concerns of working class ethnics that were confronted with the influx of a growing and physically expanding African-American population. Working class white ethnics saw themselves in a competition for housing and their own senses of community. Stirred to action by a combination of racial bigotry, fear and financial panic many working class whites banded together to stop any encroachment on their communities by any forces that sought greater racial integration. Hirsch describes in detail the violent clashes that occurred in Cicero, the Airport Homes and South Deering (75-76). White violence or the threat of it dictated in many areas where blacks could live and where public housing would be built.

It was amazing to learn of the power that key business interests exuded on city and state government in the implementation of urban planning. Hirsch related the motivations of powerful businessmen and their efforts to protect their interests in a period of economic and social change. Hersch writes, "The key figures coordinating efforts of these large interests were Milton C. Mumford, an assistant vice president of Marshall Field and Company, and Holman D. Pettibone, president of the Chicago Title and Trust Company. More than any others, they were the architects of Chicago's postwar plans" (101). These business interests were able to push through key legislation that allowed for the speedy acquisition of property and the reuse of this land to stem white flight and channel black settlement. Hirsch stated, "Locked in a desperate struggle for survival, the city's large institutions used their combined economic resources and political influence to produce a redevelopment and urban renewal program designed to guarantee their continued prosperity" (100).

Utilizing many of the same avenues as key business interests, the academics of the University of Chicago sought to stave off urban decay and secure that institutions financial future in Hyde Park. The University of Chicago used that institution's financial resources to acquire land and create buffers to black encroachment and the building of large scale public housing (152-153). Liberal academics were caught in a struggle between ideology and economic reality. Hirsch writes, "Publicly, Chancellor Kimpton denied that community deterioration was a "racial problem." Privately, the goals he stressed for the renewal of Hyde Park were clearly racial in nature. Kimpton explicitly sought an economically upgraded and predominantly white neighborhood" (153).

The realities of racial prejudice, financial concerns and efforts to solve a multifaceted problem led to the creation of the second ghetto. White working class resistance to black encroachment helped to lead to the concentration of the cities black population into high rise apartments in already ghettoized areas. Powerful business elites aided by government legislation were able to channel government power to serve the financial needs of the institutions they represented. Liberal academics utilized many of the same tools utilized by the business community to thwart the very diversity that they espoused to follow when that diversity threatened their economic futures. Hirsch's account of the forces that shaped urban planning is riveting and will motivate students to examine their own neighborhoods and communities.

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