In 1870, there were more than 3,600 Black people in Chicago, and the population grew to more than 14,000 by 1890, according to Dr. Christopher Robert Reed’s “Black Chicago’s First Century, Volume I: 1833-1900.” The 1874 fire became known as the Second Chicago Fire. Coupled with the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, it shaped the trajectory of Black Chicago through the formation of the Black Belt and the population growth that followed.
“You start seeing the dispersal of these African Americans further south, and to the west, and that’s one of the first ways that we see some of the racialized enclaves that we would come to know later begin to form,” said Julius Jones, an assistant curator at the Chicago History Museum. Jones is developing an exhibit, “City on Fire,” which will premiere on Oct. 8, which will be the 150th anniversary of the 1871 fire.
DISPLACEMENT AFTER THE FIRE
The area devastated by the 1874 fire was mostly inhabited by Jewish immigrants and middle-class Black people. According to Jones, both communities lived in relative peace and harmony before the fire. At the same time, white people viewed the area as impoverished and vice-ridden. The loss of Black property during the fire was a blessing to white real-estate speculators — after all, it was close to the lake. After the fire, Jewish immigrants moved further west and north into neighborhoods such as Near West Side, Lawndale and Albany Park. Black people moved farther south, forming what would later become Bronzeville.
As Black Chicagoans moved south, they landed between 12th and 79th Streets and Cottage Grove and Wentworth Avenues. According to Lee Bey, a Chicago native and adjunct professor of architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology, Black folks were confined to the Black Belt by design after the first and second waves of the Great Migration.
The architects of the Black Belt were state and local officials who created and practiced racist and discriminatory policies to limit the movement of Black people in the city, including restrictive covenants that barred Black people from buying or renting property in majority-white neighborhoods.
Black Chicago’s most prized cultural institutions — such as the Regal Theater, the Sunset Café, the DuSable Museum of African American History, and others — were formed in the Black Belt during the first half of the 20th century. This area was also home to Black Chicago’s literary greats Lorraine Hansberry, Gwendolyn Brooks and many others. Powerful Black business corridors were also established in neighborhoods such as Chatham.