Mellon Archives Innovation Program #2: The Johnson Publishing Library

Join us for our second Mellon Archives Innovation program on Sunday, October 9, as we discuss the social history and impact of Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City by St. Clair Drake and Horace R. Cayton and connect the book to its inclusion in and the legacy of the Johnson Publishing Library.

Published in 1945, Black Metropolis remains a foundational landmark study on Black life from the 1840s-1930s. St. Clair Drake and Horce R. Cayton’s research on race and urban life is bolstered by fieldwork conducted under the Work Progress Administration. Sociologists Drake and Cayton document and engrain in our social history Black migration, political and economic disenfranchisement, and race relations on the South Side of Chicago in this storied book.

It is no surprise, then, that Black Metropolis is a premiere object in the Johnson Publishing Library. Indeed, Horace Cayton autographed the first edition copy, a personal gesture that speaks to the book’s significance to both John…