In the Shadow of the Second Ghetto

Abstract

This essay offers a personal reflection on the significance of Arnold Hirsch’s Making the Second Ghetto. Drawing on her personal experiences going to school with African American students and traveling through the black South Side of Chicago in the 1970s and 1980s, the author argues that reading Hirsch’s work confirmed the segregation and economic inequality she witnessed as a child. She concludes that the story Hirsch narrated helped explain the origins of the urban crisis and inspired her own research on the history of Mexican American and Puerto Rican barrios in the city.