In 1917, a Milwaukee reverend named Jesse S. Woods founded the Booker T. Washington Social and Industrial Center, named for the Black educator and founder of Tuskegee University. The center served the city’s Black residents, providing boarding, recreation and social services — while the rest of the city denied them access to those things.
This concept of a society within a society is at the center of historian Joe William Trotter’s new book “Building the Black City: The Transformation of American Life.” Trotter received his bachelor’s degree in history and education from Carthage College in Kenosha.
For generations, Black Americans have had to forge their own way, creating their own opportunities and places since they were denied the same rights and opportunities as white people, often by force of law.
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And as early as the 1940s, sociologists and anthropologists were acknowledging the concept of the “Black city,” Trotter told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today.”…