Author Description

"The Images collected in Chicago's South Side reflect the enormous variety of human experiences and emotions that occurred at a unique time and place in the American landscape.". "A few celebrities appear in these images - Paul Robeson, Ella Fitzgerald, Lena Horne, Duke Ellington. But mostly we see ordinary people - in clubs and at church, sporting events, parades. Much is on view that is of interest to the student of mid-twentieth-century black Chicago: the neighborhoods Richard Wright's Bigger Thomas traversed in Native Son, the Bronzeville limned in Gwendolyn Brooks's earliest poems, and the street life that inspired the urbanscapes of painter Archibald Motley. The kitchenette apartments that Miller so deftly memorializes are bursting with people of all ages sleeping, dressing, courting, and dreaming. One senses the intimacy between his subjects and the emotions that animate their lives.". "Gordon Parks's memoir of poverty and hope in the freezing tenements of the South Side supplements the photographs, while Robert Stepto's essay contextualizes the South Side in the history of postwar Chicago. Chicago's South Side is a superb testament to the talent of the photographer, to the spirit of the people the images portray, and to the moment in American history these photographs capture."--BOOK JACKET.