Entry · catalog no. 0014
Bronzeville
/ ˈbrɑnzvɪl /BRONZ-vil
noun · Chicago, Illinois · 1930s
✓ Verified
1.
The Black district of Chicago's South Side, centered on the Douglas and Grand Boulevard community areas, which in the Great Migration decades became the commercial, musical, literary and political capital of Black America outside Harlem. Named for the bronze complexion of its residents, chosen deliberately over the terms outsiders used.
“Everybody who was anybody came through Bronzeville — the Regal, the Savoy, the Defender, all of it in walking distance.”
Origin & Attribution
Coined in 1930 by James J. Gentry, theater editor of the Chicago Bee, the Black-owned paper founded by the cosmetics manufacturer Anthony Overton. Gentry proposed it to replace "the Black Belt," a label pinned on the district from outside, and launched a Mayor of Bronzeville contest to popularize it; the idea took hold after he moved to the Chicago Defender, which crowned James E. Knight the first Mayor of Bronzeville on September 22, 1934. This is a rare case where a Black vernacular place-name has a named author and a documented date — the community naming itself, in its own press.
1930
James J. Gentry of the Chicago Bee coins Bronzeville and proposes the Mayor of Bronzeville contest
1934
Gentry revives the contest at the Chicago Defender; James E. Knight inaugurated first Mayor of Bronzeville, Sept 22
1945
Gwendolyn Brooks's A Street in Bronzeville and Drake & Cayton's Black Metropolis put the name in the national record
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The Midwest
Chicago, Illinois · 1930s
Spoken by
Black Chicagoans of the Great Migration; the Black press
$BRONZEThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Rising96 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
70/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1930
in the culture
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
Hear it spoken
By region — how it actually sounds
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Chicago, IL
@detlex
Detroit, MI
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Citations & Sources
■
A Street in Bronzeville — Gwendolyn Brooks, Harper & Brothers, August 1945
text · book
■
Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City — St. Clair Drake and Horace R. Cayton, 1945
text · book
■
+ Cite a sourceChicago Bee (Chicago, Ill., 1925- ), Library of Congress Chronicling America holdings
text · newspaper
See also