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. By the late 19th c., the first black had been elected to office. The Great Migrations from 1910-1960 brought hundreds of thousands of blacks from the South to Chicago, where they became an urban population, creating 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.
alkdjf askfja ;lkfj a;klf d moved out of certain neighborhoods to seek newer housing. The white residents who had been in the city longest were the ones most likely to move to newer, most expensive housing, as they could afford it. The early white residents (many Irish immigrants and their descendants) on the South Side began to move away under pressure of new migrants and with newly expanding housing opportunities after WWII. African Americans continued to move into the area, which had become the black capital of the country. The South Side became predominantly black. The Black Belt was formed.
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