What does E. Franklin Frazier mean when he says the City of Destruction?

Answer 1

Summarily, Frazier had a very specific purpose in mind in the part of The Negro Family entitled "In the City of Destruction." In the early part of the 1900s, urbanization was being hailed as the panacea for the problems of mass poverty that followed on the heals of the dust bowl, the Great Depression, and two world wars that severely altered the way that economies interact and the general dynamic of macro-economics. Somehow, the idea of "moving to the city" became a vision of promise. That a family could move to the city, get a job, and succeed.

Ultimately, the bottom line is that Frazier believed that cities were NOT a place of bounty and plenty for the african-american family. To him, a city was a place where values, family values, and the nuclear family, would be destroyed. Hence "City of Destruction" as a title.

A very good discussion of this subject can be read at the link below.