Topic 5A: Racial segregation in 19th Century US cities

The Black Metropolis in Chicago

By Mark La Greca

The shape and character of the Black Metropolis are strongly characterised by racial segregation but also the cultural influence of southerners who flooded the black belt of Chicago.

Racial divides in Chicago

There are three major sectors which divide the city of Chicago. African Americans especially were generally restricted along the lines of ethnicity instead of class.

-  The North by north west sector is a predominantly a white district 
-  Due west of down town but separated by the connecting branches of the Chicago river lies the formally working class,  
-  The South by south west sector is the largest concentration of African American in Chicago

The black belt in 1910

In 1910 78% of African Americans lived on the south side in a narrow strip of land known to whites as the black belt. Therefore before the great migration, African Americans known as the old settler community already established some from of black metropolis in Chicago. A 1910 census counted 35 thousand black residents on the south side while only 1400 hundred lived on the north side

The Great Migration (1916 to 1930):

Gym crow Laws in southern states strictly segregated African Americans from white Americans in all aspects of life. Institutions including The Chicago Defender encouraged southern blacks to migrate north to find factory jobs “through tales of better working conditions’  Some industries even sent recruitment scouts down south to find workers as there was a sever labour shortage during and after the ww1, just as industry was rapidly expanding  Between 1910 and 1930 the population increased from 44,130 to 233,903.  This had major ramification for the life of blacks in northern cities both good and bad. Despite the massive increase in population racial covenants restricted the expansion of the black belt. These covenants became legally binding agreements usually between white real estate agents and home owners to prevent the renting or sale of housing to non whites with the threat of civil action. A 1917 survey of realtors counted that of the 97 listed units  there was 664 applicants . The increasing demand for houses allowed landlords to charge the “highest rents for the worst housing from the most economically disenfranchised population”

On average rent was “3 dollars per week, 4-5 times the rate of Mississippi towns”

New migrants also changed the nature and expression of the black metropolis through cultural, traditional, emerging cultural forms, religious practice,  music, food and other forms of cultural expression, for example jazz

The ‘Red Summer’ of 1919

The great migration caused tension between white and black individuals to reach an all time high for a variety of factors. Riots broke out  after the stoning to death of a black boy who accidentally floated across an invisible line marking the black swimming area from the white beach. After confronting police who refused to charge the perpetrator violence erupted along the east west residential border. Over 14 days 38 were killed and hundreds were injured in the race riots of 1919. This riot and how it happened highlights the highly contested nature of urban environments and how race and land can be intrinsically linked to one another.

Old and New Settlers

The huge influx of migrants created “ideological, political and cultural contestation between the old and new settlers” Over time  the terms Old and new settler related less to when one arrived in Chicago but rather “ideas about industrialised labour and leisure as expressions of respectability.” New settlers de-emphasised the fight for integration and racial equality but instead dealt with discrimination by creating black only institutions. They  established a bank, hospital, YMCA, baseball teams and many other black only institutions. The older elite feared this would affect their service businesses with white classes threatened by the growing number of African Americans who no longer bowed down to white supremacy. This helped foster a climate of change giving rise to the new negro generation. After increasing struggles for consistent work and better living conditions old and new settlers began to agree on “black cultural and economic autonomy” Despite this there was still heavy resistance from old settlers regarding leisure and labour activates mainly located in “the stroll”, which The defender and other news papers stated “gave the race a bad name.”

The Black metropolis and The Stroll

The new settler ideology turned to the strolls commercialised leisure world to create alternative kinds of labour and was the central artery of black metropolis. These leisure industries provided “clean work, economic alternatives, the possibility of geographical mobility and a liberating identity outside the dehumanising conditions of factories and relatively free of the intimate sexual harassment found working in white homes.” The stroll was a  melting pot for jazz converging northern and southern musical styles attracting black and white people who littered the streets. Other vices such as prostitution allowed woman originally earning 6 dollars per week in labour intensive jobs normally associated with men an opportunity to now “sells her body for 25 dollars”  Chicago’s black gambling entrepreneurs operating in the stroll used their earnings to reinvest into the black community funding many all black institutions such as baseball teams and cabaret theatres whereby blacks were no longer subjected to the racial discrimination of white ownership. African Americans on the stroll presented themselves in a very different light to conservative old settler ideological principles emphasising a commitment to labour intensive work.