African Americans in Chicago 1910-1940

The Great Migration radically transformed Chicago, both politically and culturally.

Between 1900 and 1910, the African-American population grew quickly in Chicago. Much of the growth can be attributed to the Chicago Defender, an African American newspaper, providing copies to train porters to distribute in southern states. The newspaper would highlight employment opportunities and offers to help new migrants to get settled. Many churches were involved with this effort, and southern blacks jumped on the chance to remove themselves from their hostile environments.

Most blacks were restricted to the South Side of Chicago, a racially designated and segregated area. This is one of the reasons the black belt region started. When blacks moved into other non-black areas, they were often confronted with racial hostility and brutality. To date, the South Side remains the core of the black community, although the neighborhoods have expanded beyond the original borders, with significant populations on the west-side of Chicago and the southernmost suburbs.

From 1910-1940, most of the new residents had come from southern rural areas with skills often too low to qualify for big-city jobs. They mostly had been farm workers and laborers in the South. Most were poorly educated due to the inferior schools set aside for them. The new migrants took advantage of the better schooling in Chicago and made a lot of progress.  After 1940, most blacks had been exposed to city living in the south and came with better skills and education. They were the most ambitious, better educated with more urban skills to apply to their new homes.

The Black Belt

The South Side was known as the Black Belt and was inhabited by almost 75% of Chicago’s African American population. The area consisted of run down buildings, abandoned by their former white owners. Discrimination affected their choice of housing.

However, there were distinct areas based on income, with more affluent African Americans living further south of their lower-income brethern.

Business
Many of the new residents were tied to domestic service and other manual labor jobs. A handful were small business owners and professionals. Over time, a small, but growing, number of people were able to obtain city jobs, which helped to expand the professional class. Fighting employment discrimination was an ongoing struggle for African Americans in Chicago. Many companies restricted the hiring and placement of blacks. It was not unusual to see signs that said “We don’t hire Negros.”

The migration expanded the market for African American business. “The most notable breakthrough in black business came in the insurance field. There were four major 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. African Americans used these trades to build their own communities. These shops gave the blacks a chance to establish their families, earn money, and become an active part of the community.

Achievement

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, the Chicago Defender, was published in Chicago and circulated in the South as well.

After long efforts, in the late 1930s, workers organized across racial lines to form the United Meatpacking Workers of America. By then, the majority of workers in Chicago’s plants were black, but they succeeded in creating an interracial organizing committee. It succeeded in organizing unions both in Chicago and Omaha, the city with the second largest meatpacking industry. This union belonged to the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), which was more progressive than the American Federation of Labor.

They succeeded in lifting segregation of  job positions. For a time, workers achieved living wages and other benefits, leading to blue collar middle-class life for decades. Some blacks were also able to move up the ranks to supervisory and management positions. The CIO also succeeded in organizing Chicago’s steel industry.

Blacks began to win elective office in local and state government. The first blacks had been elected to office in Chicago in the late 19th c., decades before the Great Migrations.

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