ABSTRACT

The Kerner Commission reported that “our nation was moving toward two societies, one black, one white, separate and unequal”. The South’s largest and richest black community. A sociologist, Robert D. Bullard sketches the situation facing Houston’s blacks in areas such as housing and neighborhood development, employment, the environment, law enforcement, civil rights, and political power. Bullard traces the historical development of Houston’s black community in terms of its size, spatial distribution, and the impact of racial discrimination on it. He also provides some comparative data from other cities. Dianne M. Pinderhughes examines the black experience in Chicago in light of theories of pluralism. Pinderhughes views the groups as having had real political power through the mechanism of Chicago’s political machine. Italian and Polish Americans, along with Irish Americans and other twentieth-century immigrants, often benefited from the repression of Chicago’s black citizens.