Communities in Chicago

Chicago, Illinois was a popular city in the early United States. Chicago was a center for trade due to the water sources running through it. The two rivers located in Chicago, the Chicago River and the Des Plaines River, connected the city to the Mississippi river and Lake Michigan. Railroads through Chicago also helped it become a transportation center in the United States. Thousands of immigrants came to Chicago every year. Settlers and visitors arrived constantly by wagon, ship, or even train. There were around ten railroads that congregated in the city. Many people saw Chicago as a great opportunity. Merchants, tradesmen, and business from the East Coast scrambled to the new businesses opportunities in the city. In 1870, only one year before the Great Fire, around 300,000 people lived in Chicago.

After WW II, Chicago’s Housing Authorities chose to construct more public housing options for its Chicago residents. The Public Housing Administration highly advised against building high-rises for Chicago families. However, money was very limited for this project which soon became a huge factor in the while planning and constructing new public housing. Despite Daley’s attempt to build the Taylor homes as a low-rise project, construction began on the high-rises in 1960, which would later become the longest housing project in the world. Some speculate that low-high rises would have been built adorably, if the land on the outskirts of the city had been made available. However, a white alderman opposed the idea of having blacks occupy houses in the same wards as them. During construction it was estimated that that average family contained roughly six people. But, realistically that was an inaccurate estimate, as extended families often lived in these apartments. Overtime, the housing projects became horrific and overcrowded with problem tenants. “One resident complained in 1965: The World looks on all of us project rats, living on a reservation like untouchables (Pacyga, Chicago, 334).” In addition to the housing problems, citizens accused Daley of purposely segregating the housing projects from the rest of Chicago (Daley:  The Last Boss). Citizens claim that the Dan Ryan Expressway route was shifted to reinforce the border between Daley's native Bridgeport and the Black Belt to the east (Encyclopedia, Chicago). Shortly after Martin Luther King’s death, looting and rioting swept through Chicago Black west side. Mayor Daley, issued an order that was broadcast: “shoot to kill any arsonist … with a Molotov cocktail in his hand." This did not settle well with the Chicago community and especially the Africa-American people. Daley is often remembered as one of Chicago’ most powerful

I lived my early years in a suburb of Chicago (LaGrange) that was all white, as far as I knew. There was a part of town that was literally “across the tracks.” I’m not sure of the racial

Erik Larson’s book Devil in the White City is full of magic and madness that has shaped the society of the late 19th century that is specific to in Chicago. The issues that have been handled through this time frame that are addressed in this book is that how Chicago was known to be the black city at first, and how the city hoped that hosting the World’s fair would increase their reputation. Secondly, the magic of a man named Daniel Burnham that did put the plans of the world fair in Chicago into life and the obstacles that he had overcame. Next, once the world fair was complete, it has made Chicago “The White city,” by its dazzling designs and attractions that made it memorable. Then, the madness of H.H. Holmes and how his evil deeds has

Chicago from the1920s through the 1940s was the melting pot of America, with its multitude of vastly different people and different types of housing and living conditions. Around the early 1920s in Chicago, 80 percent of the undeveloped city were immigrants from Europe and their children. A majority of the houses in Chicago in the 1920s were set up to improve immigrants’ living conditions. These houses were often large complexes in which immigrants lived together in and were provided meals and tutoring in English. After World War I ended in 1918, many people moved from small rural communities in the Midwest to Chicago. This resulted in the construction of many large apartment buildings in place of old townhouses. In large cities like Chicago,

Chicago in the 1920s was a turning point for the development of ethnic neighborhoods. After the opening of the first rail connection from New York to Chicago in the 1840s, immigration sky rocketed from that point on. Majority of the immigrants to Chicago were Europeans. The Irish, Italians, eastern European Jews, Germans, and Mexicans were among the most common ethnicities to reside in Chicago. These groups made up the greater part of Chicago. The sudden increase in immigration to Chicago in the 1920s soon led to an even further distinguished separation of ethnicities in neighborhoods. The overall development of these neighborhoods deeply impacted how Chicago is sectioned off nowadays. Without these ethnicities immigrating to Chicago

Many left to the North because it was a place “…where there are no lynchings” (Sandburg 15), a place where they could be safe. The black population in Chicago lived in an area known as the “black belt.” The Negro Migration caused the population in the Chicago “black belt” to more than double from 50,000 to 125,000 making Chicago have the third or fourth largest black population next to New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Washington (7).

The terms Bronzeville and Black Metropolis can be used interchangeably to signify the interdependence between the two as an emblematic space for blacks that attempted to construct a sustainable all black utopia in Chicago. The Black Metropolis began as a black community instituted from forced segregation that eventually cultivated the imagined neighborhood of Bronzeville, where black Chicagoans asserted their collective agency to legitimize their race for complete integration. The geographic imaginary of Bronzeville relied heavily on a unified [all black] community, but intr-racial antipathies stemming from cultural and socioeconomic class differences undermined true racial solidarity leaving a neighborhood and faction of the black population dispossessed.

There was also a big influx of blacks to Chicago. The numbers of blacks migrating to Chicago was tremendous. Many reasons Tuttle states are the cause for this. The major one is just blacks wanting to leave the south. They wanted to leave the segregated south in hope of a better future. They were tired of the Jim Crow laws, lynching, poor school, and constant harassment. A black said, “Anywhere north will do us”(Tuttle, 79). Another reason was jobs. In the time of war, the big manufactories trying to keep up with the needs of the military were in dire needs of people to work. There were actual labor recruiters whose job was to go out and recruit blacks to work in the factories. Moreover, when the opportunity to work opened up blacks took them in full demand. It was a way out of the south.

Northern urban areas amid the nineteenth city were much more incorporated than their counterparts. There was also less residential separation between races. African Americans, American-born whites, and immigrants shared neighborhoods. These living examples guaranteed that every day contacts between blacks and whites were more common, yet it varied with economic and political conditions. It was exceptionally common for African Americans and Germans to have generally agreeable associations, particularly in contrast to the violence that marked contact between blacks and Irish immigrants. In urban areas, for example, Boston, New York, Cincinnati, and Philadelphia, hostility between these groups in some cases erupted into open and bloody. Irish workers shared with these blacks a

Racial segregation has had a long history in Chicago. While separation by nationality had always been apparent in the city, with neighborhoods typically being dominated by a certain ethnicity, no group of Chicagoans experienced the degree of segregation that African Americans faced in everything from the housing districts to public services. Forced to live only in designated areas by de facto segregation, redlining, and other tactics, they had limited chances to escape the cycle of danger and discrimination of the city. Confined to only their deteriorating neighborhoods,they had little chance.

The city of Chicago is well known for its urban setting and advanced industry that's centrally located in the heart of the United States. For years, Chicago has been a passageway for goods and an epicenter for commerce which feeds an intricate economy. Moreover, Chicago is a city filled with a high degree of diversity. Chicago’s diversity, both through class and culture, has been the forefront for national movements advocating for labor and civil rights. In the collection of poems, Chicago Poems, Carl Sandburg explores the many layers of Chicago, while sharing his own perceptions of the city.

The development of the suburbs has been appointed to be the result of the “white flight” from the inner cities. In the 1950’s black Americans moved northward to cities to find industrial jobs that were within walking distance. Discrimination in cities worsened, crime rates increased and educational facilities’ credentials weakened or gained bad reputations. The upper-class families left the cities and mass migrated to the suburbs to escape the increasing crime rates and worsening conditions. This movement was later termed the “white flight”. Every American wanted to begin building the “ideal family”: two parents, two children and maybe a pet or two. This newly invented middle-class prospered as

I learned that every state has its own rough areas and good areas. I have visited Chicago, IL and it remind me a lot as New York City except for it being windy some of the time. The only thing I should have done in Chicago is watched the Chicago Bears, Chicago White Sox, and Chicago Cubs. Working from home must be relaxing and stress free. My wife is currently looking for work and she been searching on working from home. Congratulations receiving your Associate Degrees and I know you are very proud of yourself. Achieving a education goals give you the strives to accomplish more. The good thing is that you closer to a Bachelor Degree in a blink of an

If you’re looking moving to a different neighborhood whats the first thing you do? See whats around that’s convenient for you and if its safe to live there. For about fourteen years I lived in Beverly, Chicago It was convenient for my mother because it was close to my grandfather, school, and work. Her job was located in Evergreen Park which was nearby, these two neighborhoods are very similar but yet have their differences. Some of the there similarities are they both mostly have whites, big houses, and the blocks are quiet. Their differences are Beverly has candy stores and parks, Beverly police, but not everyday stores people shop at. Evergreen, on the other hand, has a mall, Evergreen police, and convenient stores people shop at every