POLIT/AFCNA 234 Black Metropolis: From MLK to Obama

1779: Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, a free African man of Haitian descent, settles in as the first permanent non-Native settler and founder of what would become Chicago. du Sable settled on the north bank of the Chicago River

 

1817: Illinois' northern border is moved north placing Chicago in Illinois

 

1818: Illinois is admitted into the Union as a free state

 

1819 (to 1865): Black Codes are enforced

 

1833: Chicago is incorporated as a town

 

1837: Chicago is incorporated as a city (the same year that Mount Holyoke College was founded)

 

1840: Fugitive slaves and freedmen establish the first Black community in Chicago

 

1844: Quinn Chapel AME Church is established

 

1848: Illinois and Michigan Canal is completed

 

1865: Union Stockyards open

 

1871: John Jones, the first Black Cook County commissioner, is elected into office 

 

1871: The Great Chicago Fire kills close to 300 people, destroys almost four square miles, and leaves many residents homeless

 

1874: School segregation is outlawed in Chicago

 

1878: Ferdinand Barnett founded The Conservator (first Black newspaper in Chicago)

 

1885: Segregation is outlawed in public spaces in Chicago

 

1885: First signs of policy game emerge

 

1889: Jane Addams establishes Hull House

 

1891: Provident Hospital opens on the South Side (first Black hospital in Chicago)

 

1893: Columbian Exposition (World’s Fair)

 

1893: Dr. Daniel Hale Williams performs first successful open heart surgery in America at Provident Hospital

 

1894: Ida Platt becomes the first Black woman to earn her law license in Illinois

 

1895: Ferdinand Barnett sells The Conservator to his wife Ida B. Wells

 

1900: Flow of the Chicago River is reversed

 

1904: Old Settlers Social Club is formed

 

1905: Publisher and editor Robert Sengstacke Abbott debuts The Chicago Defender

 

1908: Jesse Binga opens Binga State Bank (the first Black owned bank in Chicago)

 

1909: Daniel Burnham and Edward H. Bennett introduce the "Plan of Chicago"

 

1911: The Chicago American Giants (an all Black baseball team) is founded

 

1915: Onset of the Great Migration (first wave)

 

1915: Jazz debuts in Chicago

 

1915: Oscar Stanton De Priest is elected as the first Black alderman in Chicago

 

1916: Thomas Andrew Dorsey (father of gospel music) migrates to Chicago

 

1916: The Chicago Urban League is established

 

1919: The Chicago Race Riot of 1919 (23 Black people were killed)

 

1919: Joseph Bibb debuts the Chicago Whip ("Don’t Spend Your Money campaign" in the Black Belt)

 

1919: Claude Barnett forms the Associated Negro Press

 

1920: Mississippi Delta blues arrives in Chicago