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The 'history of African Americans in Chicago' dates back to Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable’s trading activities in the 1780s.^[1] Fugitive slaves and freedmen established the city’s first black community in the 1840s. Passing through the late 1800s and on to the 1900s, there were many African American elites who contributed to establishing a home for the blacks in Chicago. Their goal was to build a black community with the same advantages as the white community of Chicago.

Contents

Segregation

The Migration

Housing

Culture

Business

Achievements

See also

Footnotes

References

See also

Segregation

Especially after the Civil War, Illinois had some of the most progressive anti-discrimination legislation in the nation.^[2] School segregation was first outlawed in 1874, and segregation in public accommodations was first outlawed in 1885. The state, however, was also a pioneer in using racially restrictive housing covenants, a type of private restriction on housing integration, in the 1920s. The large black population in Chicago (40,000 in 1910, and 278,000 in 1940) faced some of the same discrimination in Chicago as they had in the South. It was hard for many blacks to find jobs and find a nice place to live because of the barriers that were built between the two groups of people.
Though other techniques to maintain housing segregation were used previously, in 1927 the political leaders of Chicago began to adopt racially restrictive covenants. The Chicago Real Estate Board promoted a racially restrictive covenant to YMCAs, churches, women's clubs, PTAs, Kiwanis clubs, chambers of commerce and property owners' associations. At one point, as much as 80% of the city was included in restrictive covenants.
While the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that racial restrictive covenants were unconstitutional in 1948, this did not solve blacks' problems with finding adequate housing. Homeowners' associations discouraged members from selling to black families, maintaining residential segregation. With black families starting to move in, whites started to move out of certain neighborhoods to maintain that separation. When most of the whites moved away from the South Side to keep segregation intact, the South Side started to get predominatly black and the black belt was formed.

The Migration

The black population in Chicago significantly increased in the early to mid-1900s, in large part due to the Great Migration. While African Americans made up less than two percent of the city's population in 1910, by 1960 the city was nearly a quarter black.

One of the major turning points for African Americans in the North was World War I. Between 1915 and 1960, thousands of black southerners fled into Chicago trying to potentially get away from the segregation in the south and seek economic freedom in the north. The African American problem no longer belonged directly to the south. “The migration of African Americans from the rural south to the urban north became a mass movement.”^[3]. The migration was radically transforming Chicago, both politically and culturally. ^[4]. Also Resulting from this migration was a population of poorly educated and unskilled blacks. This led to public attention, and the great migration was charted and evaluated. The north was starting to change, and urban white northerners started to get a little worried. Worried that their neighborhoods and way of life as they knew it would change. “Chicago was a focal point of the great migration and the racial violence that came in its wake.” With Chicago steady expanding during this time, it opened up opportunities for southerners to find work. Chicago’s African-American newspaper, the ''Chicago Defender'', made the city well known to the southerners, at times sending bundles of papers southwards on the Illinois Central trains, where Pullman Porters would drop them off in Black towns. “Chicago was the most accessible northern city for African Americans in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas.” “Then Between 1916 and 1919, 50,000 blacks came to crowd into the burgeoning black belt, to make new demands upon the institutional structure of the South Side.”

Housing

Between 1900 and 1910, there were significant changes in the African American population in Chicago. White hostility and population growth combined to create the ghetto on the South Side. Most of this large population was composed largely of migrants. In 1910 over 30 percent of blacks lived in predominantly black sections of the city.The eight or nine neighborhoods that had been set as areas of black settlement in 1900 remained the core of the Chicago African American community. The Black Belt slowly expanded to accommodate the growing population. As the population grew, African Americans became more confined to a delineated area, instead of spreading throughout the city. When blacks moved into mixed neighborhoods, white hostility grew. After fighting over the area, oftentimes whites left the area and left the area to be dominated by blacks. This is one of the reasons the black belt region started.
The 'Black Belt' of Chicago was the chain of neighborhoods on the South Side of Chicago where three-quarters of the city's African American population lived in the mid-20th century. The Black Belt was an area of aging, dilapidated housing that stretched 30 blocks along State Street on the South Side, and was rarely more than seven blocks wide.The South Side black belt expanded in only two directions in the twentieth century-south and east.The South Sides "black belt" also contained zones related to economic status. The poorest blacks lived in the northernmost, oldest section of the black belt, while the elite resided in the southernmost section.^[5] Then in the mid 1900s, blacks began slowly moving up to better positions in the work force.^[6] Many blacks lived in apartments that lacked plumbing, with only one bathroom for each floor. With the buildings being so overcrowded, building inspections and garbage collection was below the minimum mandatory requirements for healthy sanitation. This unhealthiness increased the threat of disease. During this time the infant death rate in the Black Belt was 16% higher than the rest of the city.
Because crime in African American neighborhoods was a low priority to the police, rates of violence and prostitution were also high.
In 1946, the Chicago Housing Authority tried to ease the pressure in the overcrowded ghettos and proposed to put public housing sites in less congested areas in the city. The white residents did not take to this very well, so city politicians forced the CHA to keep the status quo and just develop high rise projects in the Black Belt for the people to live in.

Culture

Between 1916 and 1920, almost 50,000 Black Southerners moved to Chicago, which profoundly shaped the city's development. In particular, the new citizens caused the growth of local churches.
The black arts community in Chicago was especially vibrant. The 1920s were the height of the Jazz Age, and along the Stroll, a bright-light district on State Street, jazz greats like Louis Armstrong headlined at nightspots including the Delux Café. Black Chicagoans' literary output between 1925 and 1950 was also prolific, and rivaled that of the Harlem Renaissance. Prominent writers included Richard Wright, Willard Motley, William Attaway, Frank Marshall Davis, St. Clair Drake, Horace R. Clayton, and Margaret Walker. In Chicago, black writers turned away from the folk traditions embraced by Harlem Renaissance writers, instead adopting a grittier style of "literary naturalism" that allowed them to better depict life in the urban ghetto. The classic ''Black Metropolis'', written by St. Clair Drake and Horace R. Clayton, exemplifies the style of the Chicago writers and is today the most detailed portrayal of Black Chicago in the 1930s and 1940s.

Business

Chicago’s black population developed a class structure composed of a large number of domestic workers and other manual laborers, along with a small, but growing, contingent of middle-and-upper-class business and professional elites. In 1929, black Chicagoans gained access to city jobs, and expanded their professional class. Fighting job discrimination was a constant battle for African Americans in Chicago, as foremen in various companies restricted the advancement of black workers, which often kept them from earning higher wages.^[5] Then in the mid 1900s, blacks began slowly moving up to better positions in the work force.^[1]
The migration expanded the market for African American business. "The most notable breakthrough in black business came in the insurance field." There were four insurance companies founded in Chicago. Then, in the early twentieth century, service establishments took over. The African American market on State Street during this time consisted of barber shops, restaurants, pool rooms, saloons, and beauty salons. These were trades that African Americans had experience in, and made them a little money because white northerners were not giving service to the blacks in this neighborhood. These shops gave the blacks a chance to establish their families, earn money, and become an active part of the community.

Achievements

In the early 20th century many prominent African Americans were Chicago residents, including Republican and later Democratic congressman William L. Dawson (America’s most powerful black politician) and boxing champion Joe Louis. America's most widely-read black newspaper,^[1]the ''Chicago Defender'', was also published there. In the late 1930s the Congress of Industrial Organizations succeeded, after long work, at overcoming racial discord in two of Chicago’s major industries, steel and meatpacking. Some blacks were then able to move up the ranks to management positions and receive a stable income. Blacks were even starting to win elective office in local and state government.

See also

★ Black Belt (U.S. region)

★ Great Migration (African American)

★ Racial segregation in the United States

Footnotes

1. Christopher Manning, "African Americans", ''Encyclodpedia of Chicago'', http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/27.html.
2. "Jim Crow History", ''State of Illinois'', http://www.jimcrowhistory.org/scripts/jimcrow/lawsoutside.cgi?state=Illinois
3. Allen H. Spear, black Chicago: the making of a negro ghetto (1890-1920)
4. http://www.frommers.com/destinations/print-narrative.cfm?destID=6&catID=0006020044
5. "Chicago: Destination for the Great Migration", ''The African-American Mosaic'', ''Library of Congress'', http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/african/afam011.html.
6. During this time, it was the capital of Black America.() Many African Americans who moved to the Black Belt area of Chicago were from the Black Belt in the Southeastern region of the United States.
Discrimination played a big role in the lives of blacks at this time, they often struggled to find decent housing.
Immigration to Chicago at this time also contributed to overcrowding, as primarily lower-class newcomers sought cheap housing. As a result, more and more people tried to fit into converted “kitchenette” and basement apartments. Living conditions in the black belt resembled conditions in the West Side ghetto or in the stockyards district. Although there were decent homes in the negro sections, the core of the black belt was a festering slum. A 1934 census estimated that black households contained 6.8 people on average, whereas white households contained 4.7.Arnold Richard Hirsch, "Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago 1940-1960", ''University of Chicago'', 1998, http://books.google.com/books?id=px0PuO7GWhsC&pg=PP1&ots=9I1rYsYyNh&dq=%22Making+the+Second+Ghetto%22+hirsch&sig=IPgKY-xgpCRZwpCsboI_rk0UPgc#PPA18,M1.
7. "Chicago: Destination for the Great Migration", ''The African-American Mosaic'', ''Library of Congress'', http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/african/afam011.html.
8. Christopher Manning, "African Americans", ''Encyclodpedia of Chicago'', http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/27.html.
9. Christopher Manning, "African Americans", ''Encyclodpedia of Chicago'', http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/27.html.

References

★ Best, Wallace. "Black Belt". ''Encyclopedia of Chicago''. Apr. 2007. .

★ "Chicago: Destination for the Great Migration". ''The African-American Mosaic''. 5 Jul. 2005. ''Library of Congress''. Apr. 2007. .

★ Hirsch, Arnold Richard. "Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago 1940-1960". ''University of Chicago''. 1998.

★ Manning, Christopher. "African Americans". ''Encyclodpedia of Chicago''. Apr. 2007. .

★ Villanueva, Walter. "Cause for Migration, A Cause for Crime." 12 Apr. 2001. ''University at Buffalo''. Apr. 2007. .

See also

★ History of Chicago

★ Chicago Race Riot of 1919