Black Milwaukee

Abstract

In his response to commentaries on Black Milwaukee, Joe William Trotter Jr. not only provides insight into his own intellectual journey toward a class-based analysis of the black urban community but acknowledges the salient limitations of the proletarianization thesis, particularly vis-à-vis the experiences of black women as outlined by Rhonda Williams. Among the specific arguments of contributors to this volume, however, he gives substantial attention to Will Jones's notion that proletarianization entailed acceptance of a “teleological model of modernization,” Wendell Pritchett's suggestion that perhaps urban historians have perceived Black Milwaukee as primarily a labor study and overlooked its contributions to urban history, and Roger Biles's query about the generalizability of the Milwaukee experience to other industrial cities. Professor Trotter concludes with reflections on the changing state of the field of African American urban history and how he might write a history of blacks in Milwaukee today.