Popular Fronts

by Mullen, Bill V.

• ISBN13: 9780252067488
• ISBN10: 0252067487
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-08-01
• Publisher: Univ of Illinois Pr

Summary

In a stunning revision of radical politics during the Popular Front period, Bill Mullen redefines the cultural renaissance of the 1930s and early 1940s as the fruit of an extraordinary rapprochement between African-American and white members of the U.S. Left struggling to create a new "American Negro" culture.A dynamic reappraisal of a critical moment in American cultural history, Popular Fronts includes a major reassessment of the politics of Richard Wright's critical reputation, a provocative reading of class conflict in Gwendolyn Brooks's poem "A Street in Bronzeville", and in-depth examinations of the institutions that comprised Chicago's black cultural renaissance: the Chicago Defender, the period's leading black newspaper; Negro Story, the first magazine devoted to publishing short stories by and about black Americans; and the WPA-sponsored South Side Community Arts Center.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Introduction	1	(18)
Chicago and the Politics of Reputation: Richard Wright's Long Black Shadow	19	(25)
Turning White Space into Black Space: The Chicago Defender and the Creation of the Cultural Front	44	(31)
Artists in Uniform: The South Side Community Art Center and the Defense of Culture	75	(31)
Worker-Writers in Bronzeville: Negro Story and the African-American ``Little'' Magazine	106	(20)
Genre Politics/Cultural Politics: The Short Story and the New Black Fiction Market	126	(22)
Engendering the Cultural Front: Gwendolyn Brooks, Black Women, and Class Struggle in Poetry	148	(33)
American Daughters, Fifth Columns, and Lonely Crusades: Purge, Emigration, and Exile in Chicago	181	(20)
Postscript: Bronzeville Today	201	(6)
Appendix	207	(6)
Notes	213	(23)
Index	236