Chicago's New Negroes: Modernity, the Great Migration, and Black Urban Life: Baldwin, Davarian L.

The Marketplace of Ideas: Black Intellectual Life in Early Twentieth-Century Chicago by Davarian Baldwin is a groundbreaking book that challenges traditional assumptions about the lack of a thriving black intelligentsia in early twentieth-century Chicago.

Through an abundant archive of cultural formations, Baldwin identifies a fresh model of urban culture rich with politics, ingenuity, and entrepreneurship.

This book explores the thoughts and lives of influential figures such as Madam C.

J.

Walker, Oscar Micheaux, Andrew "Rube" Foster, Elder Lucy Smith, Jack Johnson, and Thomas Dorsey, revealing their individual expressions of a much wider spectrum of black political and intellectual possibilities.

By placing consumer-based amusements alongside the more formal arenas of church and academe, Baldwin suggests important new directions for both the historical study and the constructive future of ideas and politics in American life.

This book is a must-read for anyone interested in African American history, cultural studies, or intellectual history.