Bitter Fruit

William Grimshaw offers the reader a chronicle of the long and tangled relationship between the black community and the Chicago Democratic machine from its Great Depression origins to the present. What emerges is a myth-busting account not of one monolithic machine but of several distinct machine regimes, each with a unique relationship to black voters and leaders, but none offering them much more than bitter fruit. Through candid interviews with contacts from his long involvement in Chicago politics, including former machine insider Mayor Harold Washington, and the dean of the antimachine aldermen Leon Despres, Grimshaw found that much of what is thought to be true about black voters and urban political machines is actually the product of inaccurate stereotypes and simplistic assumptions. He argues that the motivations and behavior of the black political community has been complex, changing, and subject to a wide range of influences throughout the history of machine politics in Chicago. Grimshaw's ability to illustrate these underlying dynamics challenges the narrowly conceived economic logic that informs much of the conventional wisdom about blacks and machine politics. Bitter Fruit is the first in-depth examination of one of the most vexed relationships in American politics. Given Grimshaw's political savvy and unusual access to key political figures, it is a book few others could have written.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.