The history of African Americans in Chicago dates back to Jean Baptiste Point du Sable’s trading activities in the 1780s. Du Sable is the city's founder. Fugitive slaves and freedmen established the city’s first black community in the 1840s. By the late 19th c., the first black had been elected to office.
The Great Migrations from 1910 to 1960 brought hundreds of thousands of blacks from the South to Chicago, where they became an urban population. They created churches, community organizations, important businesses, and great music and literature. African Americans of all classes built community on the South Side of Chicago for decades before the Civil Rights Movement. Their goal was to build a community where blacks could pursue life with the same rights as whites.
Read more about History Of African Americans In Chicago: Segregation, The Great Migration, Housing, Culture, Business, Achievements
Famous quotes containing the words history of, history, african, americans and/or chicago:
“the future is simply nothing at all. Nothing has happened to the present by becoming past except that fresh slices of existence have been added to the total history of the world. The past is thus as real as the present.”
—Charlie Dunbar Broad (1887–1971)
“The history of a soldier’s wound beguiles the pain of it.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“If your buttocks burn, you know you have done wrong.”
—White South African proverb.
“The Afrocentric exploration of the black past only scratches the surface. A full examination of the ancestry of those who are referred to in the newspapers as blacks and African Americans must include Europe and Native America.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“If you have any information or evidence regarding the O.J. Simpson case, press 2 now. If you are an expert in fields relating to the O.J. Simpson case and would like to offer your services, press 3 now. If you would like the address where you can send a letter of support to O.J. Simpson, press 1 now. If you are seeking legal representation from the law offices of Robert L. Shapiro, press 4 now.”
—Advertisement. Aired August 8, 1994 by Tom Snyder on TV station CNBC. Chicago Sun Times, p. 11 (July 24, 1994)