“The Other Suburbanites: African American Suburbanization in the North before 1950”, Andrew Wiese

This history of American suburbs has been researched and written about, but mostly as solely a white middle-class phenomenon. In Andrew Wiese’s view, such an approach misses out on a wider population that also has been experiencing life in suburbs in the past decades, people like workers, immigrants or African Americans. Through his article “The Other Suburbanites: African American Suburbanization in the North before 1950”, Wiese attempts to draw another picture; a picture that would take into consideration other communities that have been meaningful in the history of American suburbs. His particular focus is African American suburbs in the North, and his main example for this article is Chagrin Falls Park in Ohio. Wiese not only wants to explain why what has been looked at by white people and academics as “slums”, felt like a community, a home, to its African American inhabitants. He also wants to elaborate on the “motivations and values of early black suburbanites”, while bringing back black suburbanization within the context of American urban history.
To accomplish this, Wiese uses Oral History interviews and inserts them in his article in a very smooth and subtle way. Indeed, He does not quote at length the interviews, or put them in an annex at the end of his work, but he blends them into his writing, using those interviews to exemplify thesis or statements. Secondary literature and other types of primary sources are his basis for research, and then combining it with Oral History makes it more real to the readers, and helps grasp the concepts in a more concrete way. Wiese starts out by giving a context on American suburbs, and then goes on to explain how Chagrin Falls Park got started and started expanding. When he starts describing life in Chagrin Falls Park, what people used to do, how they would live, etc., is the primary use of interviews. Usually, it is children whose parents move to Chagrin Falls Park and recall the way things were. For instance, one lady remembers her father looking for a place with a garden, so they could grow vegetables and raise small livestock. Or he quotes different men to show how commuting was organized. He also uses the example of different families to present how important it was for those African Americans at that time to have a “place of their own”. Having their own house also enabled those people to rent rooms as a source of additional income. One lady and her husband built an addition to their house so they could rent it to people moving in the neighborhood, until their own house was ready. Another couple had three other houses built that they would use for rentals. Wiese also describes the family networks that existed. Having extended family and friends in the neighborhood was very important in case of hard times, and Wiese refers to different families in Chagrin Falls Park, and uses their story to demonstrate the importance and extension of such networks.
In his article, Wiese not only tries to make visible a history that has been mostly kept in the dark so far, and wants to show that behind the concept of “suburbs” in the United States in the first part of the 20th century, there were not only white middle-class families, but that the scope of inhabitants was much wider, leading to different kinds of suburbs often with common patterns. In addition to his subject, Wiese also uses a very interesting methodology, blending Oral History with social and African American history. It surely brings something more to his research, making his examples feel closer or more tangible to his readers.