ATDTDA (2): South State in the Thirties

Mon Feb 12 10:48:53 CST 2007

[...] Lew found the Archduke at last in the boll Weevil Lounge, a Negro bar down on south State in the Thirties, the heart of the vaudeville and black entertainment district in those days [...] Lew kind of enjoyed it himself in this part of town, unlike some of the ops at White city, who seemed skittish around Negroes, who'd been arriving lately in ever-increasing numbers from down South [...] (p. 47).

http://maps.google.com/maps?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&tab=wl&q=

[...] Formal segregation in Chicago slowly began to break down in the 1870s. The state extended the franchise to African Americans in 1870 and ended legally sanctioned school segregation in 1874. A state law against discrimination in public places followed in 1885, but it was rarely enforced and did nothing to address widespread employment discrimination. While not yet confined to the city's nascent ghettos, blacks generally found housing available only within emerging enclaves. 

A new cadre of leaders emerged from the business and professional elite to address these issues. In 1878 prominent attorney Ferdinand L. Barnett established Chicago's first black newspaper, the Conservator, which championed racial solidarity and militant protest. Ida B. Wells possessed a history of militant activism long before she moved to Chicago and married Barnett in 1895. Once in Chicago, Wells continued her long-standing antilynching campaign, joined the women's suffrage, club, and settlement house movements, and played a key role in the conference establishing the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1900. Reverdy Ransom, who ministered to the city's black elite at Bethel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, shared Wells's dedication to social causes and, with the help of white activists, established the Institutional Church and Settlement in 1900 to provide a range of social services to the black community. 

Steady southern migration raised Chicago's black population to 40,000 by 1910. Recognizing the power that could be derived from this growing community, black leaders began to develop independent black institutions for racial uplift. Between 1890 and 1916 black Chicagoans established Provident Hospital, the Wabash Avenue YMCA, several black newspapers, including the Chicago Defender, and local branches of the NAACP and Urban League. Chicago's black politicians, under the leadership of Ed Wright, Robert R. Jackson, and Oscar DePriest, began to wrest control from white politicians in the predominantly black Second Ward, initiating the development of the nation's most powerful black political organization. [...]

http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/27.html

http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/880.html

State Street is a major north-south thoroughfare in Chicago, Illinois. It begins on the Near North Side, intersecting with Rush Street, just south of Division Street. For much of its course, it lies between Wabash Avenue on the east and Dearborn Street/Lafayette Avenue on the west. It runs through the heart of Downtown Chicago and ends at the southern city limits, intersecting 127th Street along the bank of the Little Calumet River. Its intersection with Madison Street marks the base point for Chicago's address system.

Originally known as State Road, it was the main route south through Illinois. In its early days, it was unpaved and known for having mud so deep it could allegedly suck down a horse and buggy. In the late 1860s, Potter Palmer decided to improve State Street by moving the Field, Leiter & Co. store in 1868 and building his own Palmer House hotel on State Street in 1870. The historic Chicago Theatre is also located on State Street. [...]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Street_%28Chicago%29

from Dominic A. Pacyga and Ellen Skerrett, _Chicago: City of Neighborhoods_.  Chicago: Loyola U. Press, 1986.

When the Chicago Fire struck in 1871, it did not burn the Near South Side; but it radically changed the future of the district [...] Many of the people moved further south.  Among these were the prostitutes, gamblers, and other inhabitants of the vice district.  They moved down State Street between Polk and 16th Streets, creating the infamous Levee District [...]

The black community was also forced to move by the fire, relocating around 22nd and State Streets.  Before the turn of the century Chicago's black population was very small and not as concentrated as it would become in later years; nevertheless, eighty percent of these people lived south of the Loop [...] (pp. 303 - 04).

>From 1890 to 1915 Chicago's black population grew from less than 15,000 to more than 50,000.  This growth was overshadowed in the next four years by the so-called Great Migration which brought another 50,000 Southern blacks to the city. [...]

In 1890 the black population was still fairly well distributed across the city.  In the early years blacks were less segregated from white native Americans than the Italians were. But when the number of black people in Chicago grew so dramatically during World War I, they did not settle evenly throughout the metropolitan area but became concentrated in certain neighborhoods (p. 306).