Nicholas Lemann's The Promised Land

For the urban history reading project, I was assigned Lemann's The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How it Changed America. I actually purchased the book for myself, having heard it was a best-seller and a great addition to any library.  After reading it, I truly agreed.  The main theme of Lemann's book is the subject of race relations in America and he handles the topic with grace and skill--weaving in personal narratives and the narrative of how the Great Migration changed America from the standpoint of governance.

I also found Lemann's title instructive and ironic.  As he describes, blacks absolutely believed that moving North would bring them the kind of life they had always dreamed of--the kind of life that had not been achieved with the abolition of slavery. And yet, the title proves ironic in that the blacks that move north to Chicago find anything but the promised land they had hoped for.  Instead, as Lemann asserts, they find yet another substitution for the oppression of slavery.  I found it very interesting how Lemann compares and explains the transitions between slavery, sharecropping, and the ghettos of the north. 

At the same time, Lemann's description of the view of white people and their inability to deal with the sudden demographic shift was equally as enlightening. The middle section on "Washington" explained the federal government's actions to me in a way I had never considered.  I wasn't aware that there was so much politicking surrounding the phenomenon of the Great Migration

For our class' purposes, I think Lemann's work provides all of the background for the situation in the nation leading up to Lansing's decision to build 1-496 through black neighborhoods. When I first read Matt Miller's article, I felt like I was getting a glance at a situation with a much broader context--well, Lemann is that context.  The conflict between whites and blacks over a relatively small incident was indicative of similar instances occurring all over the nation. Also, Miller provides some of the black perspective and little of the white perspective.  I felt that Lemann's book filled in a lot of these gaps for me. While the situation in Chicago which Lemann focuses on for a case study was not exactly the same as Lansing's situation, the feelings of individual blacks who had moved from the South, the reaction of whites to the influx of blacks, and the response of the government of Chicago displayed the various factors that most likely went into the I-496 decision as well.

Overall, I found Lemann's book compelling. I think our class should try to employ his technique of mixing in individual tales with the overarching narrative--for me, this provided the most insight in the dynamics involved in race relations as a result of the Great Migration.