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Gary W. McDonogh, America's First Black Town: Brooklyn, Illinois, 1830–1915. By Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000. xvi, 276 pp. $37.50, isbn 0-252-02537-7.), Journal of American History, Volume 88, Issue 3, December 2001, Pages 1072–1073, https://doi.org/10.2307/2700438
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Since the 1990s, the “new urbanism” has revitalized the image of “smalltown America” in many planning discussions. While Florida's Seaside and Celebration seem literally Disney fied and may evoke new segregations by race and class, “neotraditionalism” also speaks to quests for community and order in innercity neighborhoods. Some have challenged such nostalgia, noting that Main Street was a Sinclair Lewis dilemma before it became a theme park; hence, the need for cogent historical analysis of smalltown experiences remains compelling. This is especially true of black towns, whether southern (such as Zora Neale Hurston's Eatonville) or settlements built by black exodusters in the Midwest and West. There, community and autonomy were nourished but tested in ways that recast neotradi tional issues today. At the same time, such black communities faced continual pressures of race and class: Eatonville and Celebration share their state with the site of the 1923 Rosewood massacre, where white vig ilantes ravaged another black town.