Ground-breaking when first published in 1945, Black Metropolis remains a landmark study of race and urban life. Based on a mass of research conducted by Works Progress Administration field workers in the late 1930s, it is a historical and sociological account of the people of Chicago's South Side, the classic urban ghetto. Drake and Cayton's findings not only offer a generalized analysis of black migration, settlement, community structure, and black-white race relations in the early part of the twentieth century, but also tell us what has changed in the last hundred years and what has not. This edition includes the original Introduction by Richard Wright and a new Foreword by William Julius Wilson.

"Black Metropolis is a rare combination of research and synthesis, a book to be deeply pondered. . . . No one who reads it intelligently can ever believe again that our racial dilemma can be solved by pushing buttons, or by gradual processes which may reach four or five hundred years into the future."Bucklin Moon, The Nation

"This volume makes a great contribution to the building of the future American and the free world."Louis Wirth, New York Times

"By virtue of its range, its labor and its insight, the book seems certain to become a landmark not only in race studies but in the broader field of social anthropology."Thomas Sancton, New Republic

Author's Acknowledgment

Introduction by Richard Wright

Introduction to the 1962 Edition by Everett C. Hughes

Author's Preface to the 1962 Edition

Foreword to the 1993 Edition by William Julius Wilson

Introduction: Midwest Metropolis

Part I

1. Flight to Freedom

2. Land of Promise

3. The Great Migration

4. Race Riot and Aftermath

5. Between Two Wars

Part II

6. Along the Color-Line

7. Crossing the Color-Line

8. The Black Ghetto

9. The Job Ceiling

10. The Shifting Line of Color

11. Democracy and Economic Necessity: Breaking the Job Ceiling

12. Democracy and Economic Necessity: Black Workers and the New Unions

13. Democracy and Political Expediency

Part III

14. Bronzeville

15. The Power of Press and Pulpit

16. Negro Business: Myth and Fact

17. Business Under a Cloud

18. The Measure of the Man

19. Style of LivingUpper Class

20. Lower Class: Sex and Family

21. The World of the Lower Class

22. The Middle-class Way of Life

23. Advancing the Race

Part IV

24. Of Things to Come

A Methodological Note by W. Lloyd Warner

Notes and Documentation

Bronzeville 1961

Appendix: Black Metropolis 1961

Postscript 1969

A List of Selected Books Dealing with the American Negro

Suggestions for Collateral Reading, 1962

Suggestions for Collateral Reading, 1969

Index