DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

BRONZEVILLE HISTORY

              

             In 1779, Jean Baptiste Point du Sable settled in what is now Chicago; he was the first Black resident of that area. He did not live to see that Chicago would be witnessed to the blossoming of the city within a city, or the Black metropolis. The Black Metropolis began to thrive during the early 1900s in part due to the Great Migration, which was the migration of large numbers of African-Americans from the South of the U.S. to the North. According to the Commission on Chicago Landmarks (1997), “Chicago’s African American population increased 150 percent, reaching 110,000 by 1920.” The city within city was able to support not only its growing population but it was able to thrive. African Americans residing in the Black Belt , which was marked by Van Buren Street in the Loop to 39th street, began to form their own Black-owned business, theatre districts, coffee shops, grocery stores, churches, financial institutions, clinics, and other necessary features for urban living. The reluctance of white officials or white business owners to invest in what is now, Bronzeville, did not stop African Americans from creating not just a home for themselves but also a cultural legacy and heritage in Chicago. 

 

 



DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.