The Promised Land Sparknotes

In The Promised Land, Nicholas Lehmann follows the stories of black migrants, politicians, and bureaucrats through the Great Migration, and attempts to explain the decline of northern cities, the constant liberty struggle of blacks across America, and government response to the issues surrounding the Great Migration. This work signalled a drastic change from the structured approach of Thomas Sugrue’s, The Origins Of The Urban Crisis, which observes the effects of institutions and human agency on postwar Detroit and its marginalized peoples. Both Sugrue and Lemann had (albeit slightly different) holistic views of the political climate of postwar cities, which helped provide context for prejudices towards blacks and the poor, and subsequently

explained how the stigmatization of the black and poor contributed to urban decline of the Rust Belt. Moreover, both Lemann and Sugrue consider the urban decline of the Rust Belt to be a result of the institutions, public policy, and race relations of an imbalanced capitalist society.
Lemann: A Narrative Approach
Lemann follows Ruby Daniels, a black woman from Clarksdale, Mississippi, and her journey around the southern and northern United States, as she searches for work and a spouse.

Her search eventually takes her to Chicago, where many of her former fellow sharecroppers from Clarksdale reside. Ruby Daniels personifies many of the issues that plague blacks, such as illegitimate children, drug use, and job insecurity. Ruby also reinforced stereotypes of single black mothers of the time, having been reliant on public aid. When considering the systematic discrimination Ruby experienced, the reader is left wondering if poverty is at all the fault of the individual, or a result of social pathologies hindering blacks and the

poor.
Lemann similarly follows Uless Carter, a black man also from Clarksdale, and documents his discontent with the crippling racism of the southern United States. He too makes the escape to Chicago, but with his story being much more auspicious than Ruby Daniels’. Carter is able to make a more economically stable career than Ruby Daniels, albeit still not as secure as the typical white Rust Belt worker.
The dichotomy between Ruby Daniels and Uless Carter helps the reader develop an understanding of the condition of urban blacks and the phenomenon of deindustrialization. Lemann’s use of their personal stories gives insight to the government policies, discrimination, and instability that affected the black experience in the Rust Belt.
Lemann connects the racism experienced by blacks in the south with that of the north, with the ensuing historic plight of blacks being the result. Racism took a bilateral approach to obstructing blacks: Southern blacks were subject to decades of servitude, whether it be under the institution of slavery or sharecropping, and were oppressed in nearly every aspect of life. This idea is expressed through Uless Carter and Ruby Daniels, both of whom move to the Chicago to escape the endless cycle of sharecropping, and limited freedoms of Clarksdale. Northern states did not offer the sanctuary that most southern blacks expected—upon arriving, Ruby Daniels and Uless Carter realized their status as marginalized peoples had not changed. Sugrue touches on this when he writes, “Black people were regularly charged more rent and paid lower wages than white people, and they were barred entirely from many good jobs” (65). Its harsh exclusionary environment shattered southern blacks prejudiced ideas of Chicago being an oasis teeming with economic and spatial opportunity.
Housing In The Rust Belt
Both Lemann and Sugrue address the spatial isolation of minorities in housing, and its consequences on city development. Lemann expands on this through the various relocations Ruby Daniels goes through, and how nearly every new neighborhood suffers from gang issues, juvenile delinquency, and urban blight. Lemann also mentions the lack of mobility among middle class blacks, and how many blacks were deprived of housing options through racial covenants. Many middle class blacks were forced to reside in slums even if they had the money for better housing options, and this caused tension between middle and underclass blacks. In fact, many of the middle class blacks in the Chicago area were disdainful of lower class blacks in a fashion similar to that of whites. With no way to escape the city and a growing population, black communities became cluttered and began to deteriorate.
Sugrue cites white flight as a deep rooted dilemma in cities, and a chief cause of the fall of Detroit.Through blockbusting, racial covenants, and other forms of unofficial segregation, real estate agents were able prompt and normalize white flight.

The spatial isolation present in Detroit deepened anti-integration sentiment, and the resulting shift of whites out of the Rust Belt led to conditions conducive to deindustrialization. However, Sugrue notes that “[racial prejudices] are the result of the actions of federal and local governments, real estate agents, individual home buyers and sellers, and community organizations” (11). That is to say white flight is a phenomenon dependent on political climate rather than being an entirely intrinsic, prejudiced practice of whites. This is an important distinction to make, as it helps reinforce the idea that systems such as poverty and racism are exactly that—systems, and not a result of individual immorality. The same can be said for the urban crisis in Detroit: as opposed to being purely an issue of deindustrialization or poverty, Sugrue argues that the circumstances of Detroit may be in part an institutional problem. “The shape of the postwar city, I contend, is the result of political and economic decisions, of choices made and not made by various institutions, groups and

individuals.”
Automation: A Double Edged Sword
Both Sugrue and Lehmann note automation as a cause for disproportionate unemployment among blue collar minorities. However, Lehmann discusses automation as a push factor during the Great Migration, while Sugrue claims automation to be a driver of deindustrialization in the North. Automation in the South helped usher in the Great Migration, by essentially liquidating the black job market and forcing southern blacks to search for employment. The sharecropping system which had dominated the south since the abolishment of slavery, became a thing of the past with the advent of the mechanical cotton picker. As Lemann describes it, “What the mechanical cotton picker did was make obsolete the sharecropper system...by which cotton planters’ need for a great deal of cheap labor was satisfied,”(5, Lemann), automation made black farmhands unnecessary, and thus created a surplus of black labor in the south. This, along with racial oppression, helped initiate the exodus of blacks to northern cities. And while this migration was an important step towards enfranchisement, the influx of black labor in the south was not beneficial to the status of blacks, as it resulted in mass unemployment that would linger for decades to come.
Sugrue almost seems to pick up where Lemann left off with automation. He cites automation as a cause for unemployment for blue collar workers, especially black workers as they were often “last hired, first fired”. By 1960, the majority of entry level jobs that were available at the beginning of the war economy boom had disappeared. Furthermore, as industry began to move from the heavily unionized Rust Belt cities to the less unionized southern and western United States, job instability worsened and this combined with the deteriorating conditions of the Rust Belt and unrelenting racism, would result in the urban crisis in postwar northern cities.
Nicholas Lemann and Thomas Sugrue recognize urban decay of the Rust Belt was the result of federal and local government ignorance, unemployment, and persistent racism. While the authors take different approaches in observing what happened, they also complement each other by studying the narrative of policy makers and those affected by it, and take a broader view of individual and group behavior that can result in economic instability, racial tension, class inequality, and urban blight. Furthermore, by studying analyses of the roots of the urban crisis at the individual and community level, and understanding the roles of institutions that made the urban crisis possible, we can potentially restore cities that have suffered through deindustrialization, and ensure that it does not happen again.