Composition
Illinois's 2nd Congressional District is adjacent to the 1st Congressional District to the north and west, the 11th Congressional District to the south, and Indiana's 1st Congressional District to the east. The district's northeast border follows Lake Michigan's shoreline for several miles. The district was created following the 1830 U.S. Census and came into existence in 1833, five months before Chicago was organized as a town. The 2nd Congressional District initially included Southeastern Illinois until 1853 and stretches of Northern Illinois until 1873. It has been based in Chicago since 1853, and part of the southeast side since 1903. Redistricting following the 2000 U.S. Census placed a majority of the district's population outside Chicago for the first time in 100 years, and moved the district's borders beyond Cook County for the first time since 1873.
As in the neighboring 1st District, a majority of this district's residents (62.4%) are African American. The district has been reliably Democratic since the 1960s, having not elected a Republican to Congress since 1950. Democratic congressional candidates regularly receive over 80% of the vote here.
Read more about this topic: Illinois's 2nd Congressional District
Famous quotes containing the word composition:
“Boswell, when he speaks of his Life of Johnson, calls it my magnum opus, but it may more properly be called his opera, for it is truly a composition founded on a true story, in which there is a hero with a number of subordinate characters, and an alternate succession of recitative and airs of various tone and effect, all however in delightful animation.”
—James Boswell (1740–1795)
“I live in the angle of a leaden wall, into whose composition was poured a little alloy of bell-metal. Often, in the repose of my mid-day, there reaches my ears a confused tintinnabulum from without. It is the noise of my contemporaries.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Modern Western thought will pass into history and be incorporated in it, will have its influence and its place, just as our body will pass into the composition of grass, of sheep, of cutlets, and of men. We do not like that kind of immortality, but what is to be done about it?”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)