WBEZ posted a potent documentary on the modern city in 1961, featuring Chicago as a study of contrasts in class and segregation. The City of Necessity disparages urban life as inequitable and dehumanizing on the one hand, and on the other appeals to planners and policy makers to realize the city's civilizing power and future potential. As Bey remarks, the tell-all doc reveals a "level of poverty and dilapidation alarming by today's standards." At one point, poppa Daley is heard saying, "We have no ghetto, and we have no Negro ghetto." Uh... okay. [WBEZ, photo: Chicago in 1961 via Wikipedia Commons]
Filed under:
