A House for the Struggle

Newspaper buildings such as the Tribune Tower and Daily News headquarters have long stood as evidence of Chicago’s twin status as a media and architecture capital. But what might we discover if we focus our gaze not on these iconic sites of media power but on the media outlets, and media buildings, that primarily served the city’s African American communities? Moving these sources and spaces from the margins to the center, A House for the Struggle provides a bold new history of Chicago’s Black press through the lens of the built environment. Focusing on two landmark Black press enterprises—the Chicago Defender and Johnson Publishing Company—but drawing on a wide range of publications and media concerns that includes the Associated Negro Press, the Broad Ax, the Chicago Bee, the Chicago Whip, and Muhammad Speaks, this book demonstrates how the buildings of Chicago’s Black press became key sites in the cultural and political geography of Black Chicago. As activist hubs, community centers, art galleries, and tourist hotspots, Black media buildings served as key symbols of racial protest, Black achievement, and community advancement. Concurrently, the relationship between editorial and spatial politics—between Black media buildings and the publications they housed—helped to write new geographies of Black urban life into existence.