Chicago's Puerto Rican Community
The Puerto Rican community in Chicago has a history that stretches back more than 70 years. The first Puerto Rican migration in the 1930s to Chicago was not from the island but from New York City. Only a small number of people joined this migration. The first large wave of migration to Chicago came in the late 1940s.
Starting in 1946, many people were recruited by Castle Barton Associates as low-wage non-union foundry workers and domestic workers. As soon as they were established in Chicago, many were joined by their spouses and families.
By the 1950s, Chicago's Puerto Rican community was centered in West Town and Humboldt Park on the city's Northwest Side as well as in nearby Lincoln Park on the North Side. Puerto Rican settlement also occurred in Lawndale on the city's West Side. Gentrification in Lincoln Park which would begin in the late 1960s displace its Puerto Rican populace, forcing people to move to the west.
The events of June 12 through 14, 1966, constituted the first major Puerto Rican urban rebellion. The uprising happened at precisely the point when the Chicago Police Department began taking "precautionary measures" to head off potential rebellions of the type that had already occurred in Harlem, Watts and Philadelphia by the Black masses.
Read more about this topic: Paseo Boricua
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