Landscapes of Hope

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Between 1915 and 1940, hundreds of thousands of African Americans left their Southern homes to begin new lives in the North. Landscapes of Hope tells the story of black Chicagoans' environmental lives during the interwar years and undertakes a broad reassessment of the land's significance for black migrants nationwide. Drawing on original archival research, the book uncovers a completely new side to Chicago--and the lives of those black migrants who streamed into it--that scholars have seen mainly through the lenses of labor, religion, politics, and popular culture. The author enriches these narratives by examining the ways in which African American migrants experienced, imagined, and shaped natural and landscaped environments between 1915 and 1940. From crowded tenements and public parks in Chicago to vacation resorts, youth camps, and Civilian Conservation Corps camps in the Illinois and Michigan countryside, Landscapes of Hope reveals black Chicagoans purposefully cultivating relationships with green spaces across the Midwest