University of Chicago, Chicago IL,1967, Near fine small hardcover, 5.5" by 8.5", 241 pages plus index, prior owner seal on first title page, unclipped dust jacket has some edge loss and wear."Allan Spear explores here the history of a major Negro community during a crucial thirty-year period when a relatively fluid pattern of race relations gave way to a rigid system of segregation and discrimination. This is the first historical study of the ghetto made famous by the sociological classics of St. Clair Drake, E. Franklin Frazier, and others—by the novels of Richard Wright, and by countless blues songs. It was this ghetto that Martin Luther King, Jr., chose to focus on when he turned attention to the racial injustices of the North. Spear, by his objective treatment of the results of white racism, gives an effective, timely reminder of the serious urban problems that are the legacy of prejudice." The author himself was a remarkable individual, a Phd educator who became a prominent Minnesota Senator where he was instrumental in the passage of important human rights laws. He also came out as gay in 1974, becoming one of the first politicians in the nation to do so.