Abstract
Past research suggests that ethnic minority economies can be surprisingly resilient, possessing internal strengths that mitigate negative effects of macroeconomic downturns. Applying this argument, the present study investigates urban black communities during the Great Depression, analyzing measures of the resilience of blacks’ employment in occupations reflecting key professional, entrepreneurial, and cultural media institutions of the Black Metropolis. Census data for New York, Chicago, and Washington, DC, indicate that blacks’ employment was resilient in only a few pursuits, most of which were professions that depended on a segregated black clientele. The findings challenge assumptions about the importance of urban centers, protected markets, and occupational niches for the resilience of ethnic minority economies.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Aldrich, H., Cater, J., Jones, T., McEvoy, D., & Vellman, P. (1985). Ethnic residential concentration and the protected market hypothesis. Social Forces, 63(4), 996–1009.
Bates, T. (1994). Social resources generated by group support networks may not be beneficial to Asian immigrant-owned small businesses. Social Forces, 72(3), 671–689.
Boyd, R. L. (1998). The storefront church ministry in African American communities of the urban north during the great migration: The making of an ethnic niche. The Social Science Journal, 35(3), 319–332.
Boyd, R. L. (2000). Survivalist entrepreneurship among urban blacks during the Great Depression: A test of the disadvantage theory of business enterprise. Social Science Quarterly, 81(4), 972–984.
Boyd, R. L. (2015). The ‘black metropolis’ in the American urban system of the early twentieth century: Harlem, Bronzeville, and beyond. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 39(1), 129–144.
Drake, S. C., & Cayton, H. R. (1962). Black metropolis. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company.
Fischer, C. S. (1984). The urban experience. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Frazier, E. F. (1949). The Negro in the United States. New York: Macmillan.
Frazier, E. F. (1957). Black bourgeoisie. Glencoe, IL: The Free Press.
Gatewood, W. B. (1990). Aristocrats of color: The black elite, 1880–1920. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Greenberg, C. L. (1991). Or does it explode? Black Harlem in the Great Depression. New York: Oxford University Press.
Gregory, J. N. (2005). The southern diaspora: How the great migrations of black and white southerners transformed America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Grigoryeva, A., & Ruef, M. (2015). The historical demography of racial segregation. American Sociological Review, 80(4), 814–842.
Grossman, J. R. (1989). Land of hope: Chicago, black southerners, and the great migration. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Huggins, N. I. (1971). Harlem renaissance. New York: Oxford University Press.
Jiobu, R. M. (1988). Ethnic hegemony and the Japanese of California. American Sociological Review, 53(3), 353–367.
Johnson, J. W. (1930). Black Manhattan. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Karnig, A. K. (1979). Black economic, political, and cultural development: Does city size make a difference? Social Forces, 57(4), 1194–1211.
King, L. J. (1984). Central place theory. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications.
Landry, B. (1987). The new black middle class. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Lewin-Epstein, N., & Semyonov, M. (1994). Sheltered labor markets, public sector employment, and socioeconomic returns to education of Arabs in Israel. American Journal of Sociology, 100(3), 622–651.
Lewis, D. L. (1981). When Harlem was in vogue. New York: Oxford University Press.
Lieberson, S. (1980). A piece of the pie: Blacks and white immigrants since 1880. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Light, I. (1972). Ethnic enterprise in America: Business and welfare among Chinese, Japanese, and Blacks. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Light, I. (1976). Vice, tourism, and juvenile delinquency in black neighborhoods of New York City, 1906–1944. Annotated guide to New York Times, New York Age, and New York Amsterdam News. Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.
Light, I. (1977). The ethnic vice district, 1880–1944. American Sociological Review, 42(3), 464–479.
Light, I., & Gold, S. J. (2000). Ethnic economies. Orlando, FL: Academic.
Logan, J. R., Alba, R. D., & McNulty, T. L. (1994). Ethnic economies in metropolitan regions: Miami and beyond. Social Forces, 72(3), 691–724.
Logan, J. R., Zhang, W., & Chunyu, M. D. (2015). Emergent ghettos: Black neighborhoods in New York and Chicago, 1880–1940. American Journal of Sociology, 120(4), 1055–1094.
Massey, D. S., & Denton, N. A. (1993). American apartheid: Segregation and the making of the underclass. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
McKay, C. (1940). Harlem: Negro metropolis. New York: E. P. Dutton and Company.
Meier, A., & Rudwick, E. (1976). From plantation to ghetto. New York: Hill and Wang.
Myrdal, G. (1944). An American dilemma. New York: Harper and Brothers.
Oak, V. V. (1949). The Negro’s adventure in general business. Westport, CT: Negro Universities Press.
Osofsky, G. (1966). Harlem: The making of a ghetto. Negro New York, 1890–1930. New York: Harper and Row.
Ottley, R. (1943). New world a-coming: Inside black America. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.
Philpott, T. (1978). The slum and the ghetto: Neighborhood deterioration and middle class reform, Chicago, 1880–1930. New York: Oxford University Press.
Puth, R. C. (1969). Supreme life: The history of a Negro life insurance company, 1919–1962. Business History Review, 43(1), 1–20.
Reed, C. R. (2011). The rise of Chicago’s black metropolis, 1920–1929. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Scheiner, S. M. (1965). Negro Mecca: A history of the Negro in New York, 1865–1920. New York: New York University Press.
Shaw, S. J. (1996). What a woman ought to be and to do: Black professional women workers during the Jim Crow era. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Spear, A. H. (1967). Black Chicago: The making of a Negro community, 1890–1920. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Tolnay, S. E. (2003). The African American ‘great migration’ and beyond. Annual Review of Sociology, 29, 209–232.
U.S. Bureau of the Census. (1933a). Census of population: 1930, volume 4. Occupations by states. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
U.S. Bureau of the Census. (1933b). Census of population: 1930, volume 2. General report: Statistics by subjects. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
U.S. Bureau of the Census. (1943a). Sixteenth census of the United States: 1940, volume III. The labor force, part 1, United States summary. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
U.S. Bureau of the Census. (1943b). Sixteenth census of the United States: 1940, volume III. The labor force, parts 2-5. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
U.S. Bureau of the Census. (1943c). Sixteenth census of the United States: 1940, volume II. Characteristics of the population, part 1, United States summary. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
Waldinger, R. (1996a). Still the promised city? African Americans and new immigrants in post-industrial New York. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Waldinger, Roger. (1996b). Ethnicity and opportunity in the plural city. In R. Waldinger & M. Bozorgmehr (Eds.), Ethnic Los Angeles (pp. 445–470). New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Waldinger, R., Aldrich, H., & Ward, R. (1990). Opportunities, group characteristics, and strategies. In R. Waldinger, H. Aldrich, & R. Ward (Eds.), Ethnic entrepreneurs: Immigrant business in industrial societies (pp. 13–48). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications.
Weems, R. E., Jr. (1998). Desegregating the dollar: African American consumerism in the twentieth century. New York: New York University Press.
Wilson, W. J. (1987). The truly disadvantaged: The inner city, the underclass, and public policy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Wilson, F. D. (2003). Ethnic niching and metropolitan labor markets. Social Science Research, 32(3), 429–466.
Wilson, K. L., & Portes, A. (1980). Immigrant enclaves: An analysis of the labor market experience of Cubans in Miami. American Journal of Sociology, 86(2), 295–319.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Boyd, R.L. Resilient or Fragile? The Black Metropolis Versus the Great Depression. Race Soc Probl 9, 181–191 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12552-017-9204-2
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12552-017-9204-2