I am white; most of the characters in this novel are black.   I grew up in the relatively comfortable,  white,  heavily Jewish environs of Hyde Park; most of the characters in this novel existed in relative poverty in the all-black neighborhood known variously as the Black Belt or Bronzeville.

In the 1940s,  most white Chicagoans knew Bronzeville as a place they didn't want to go at night—nor in daytime,  for that matter.   But to the black Chicagoans who lived there,  it was a warm and welcoming place,  full of life and excitement,  the center of black culture — Chicago's Harlem.

When I began writing this novel,  I thought I had some knowledge of Bronzeville.   As a young boy,  I hung out at the States Theatre,  which my grandfather Nathan Joseph owned and operated for fifty years,  located in the very heart of Bronzeville at Thirty-Fifth and State.   And from age six to age ten,  I was in effect raised by a Bronzevillian,  our "maid" Dora Winfield of Sunflower,  Mississippi.   Her voice is in my bones.

But when I tried to write about Bronzeville,  I discovered how little I really knew.   I read books,  including the classic Black Metropolis by Horace Cayton and St. Clair Drake,  and James Grossman's enlightening Land of Hope: Chicago,  Black Southerners,  and the Great Migration.   But books weren't enough.   I needed to hear people's voices.

By great good luck,  I discovered the transcripts and tapes of the Douglas-Grand Boulevard Neighborhood Oral History Project at the Chicago Historical Society.   From this 1995 archive come the voices of Timuel D. "Tim" Black,  Charles Branham,  Junius "Red" Gaten,  Marion Hummons,  Samuel Stevens and Delores Washington.

By greater luck still,  I connected with half a dozen individuals who grew up and lived around Thirty-Fifth and State during the forties and fifties,  and interviewed them on tape.   Lillie Harston-Thomas and the late Bunny Dallas could have been Jesse Owens Trimble's schoolmates;  Enich Hymon and Harvey Lee his younger brothers; Gladys McKinney a young aunt;  and William Williams an older uncle.   Their generosity in sharing their experiences informs this novel. These are the voices you are about to hear.