ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the influence of the University of Chicago's human ecology school of thought on ideas about urban growth, race relations, and social disorganization on the ideology of black civic elites in Chicago in the 1940s and 1950s. It explores the ideas that animated the ideological framework of a group of black civic elites who wrote, spoke, and acted during the gestation of urban renewal, public housing, and fair housing policies and actions. Black civic intellectuals and professionals adopted some of the prevailing ideas regarding the structure and growth of cities, the relations between blacks and whites, and the role that behavior plays in the incidence of social problems. The chapter explores the ways in which black civic intellectuals engaged the ideas of the ecological framework on urban growth, segregation, and social disorganization. Black civic intellectuals adopted the notion of social disorganization when describing conditions within segregated black communities.
