Chicago: African Americans' Culture - Essay Example

Starting with John Baptiste’s activities of trading in the early1780s, blacks display long history especially in Chicago city. Freedmen and fugitive slaves establish a city for the black community in the 1840s. A tailor, John Jones, lead most antislavery of black people as well as efforts of antidiscrimination. Whites, amongst them who were abolitionists engaged in the campaign against black slavery. However, African Americans continued to suffer from segregation in certain public venues, like hotels, public transportation, schools, and restaurants.

Furthermore, black Chicagoans would neither participate in voting nor testify in court, against whites. Black won their liberties by the reconstruction’s overthrow and this facilitated a number of blacks to enter Chicago. This achievement pushed the population of the African Americans from about four thousand to in 1870 to fifteen thousand in 1890. The blacks progressively concentrated on the South Side of Chicago developing a class structure of domestic workers and manual laborers. The witnessed Chicago’s formal segregation began to come down in the 1870s.

The franchise is then extended to African Americans by the state in 1870 as well as it ended the legal segregation of schools - this happened in 1874. A law against prejudice in public places was implemented in 1885, although it was enforced rarely and the state did nothing to contain widespread discrimination in employment. Before the blacks got confined to ghettos, the only available housing had been within the newly developed enclaves. The black’s self-help ideology like establishing their own church and hospital in 1900 largely became an expedience matter.

This was evidenced in the early period of the twentieth century, as racial lines in Chicago were hardened. By the year1910, about 78 percent of black people of Chicago dwelled in neighbourhoods on South Chicago. The South Side formed a “Black Belt” with features of an aging area and dilapidated residence characterized by rare blocks wide. Additionally, another form of discrimination was exhibited in a pattern of education. Blacks were still suffering from exclusion regarding industrial jobs, the civil service, and most unions.

Consequently, World War I has a great impact on this arrangement, as racial ideologies were overridden by the requirements of military. This, particularly, affected the blacks’ exclusion from industry. With the European’s immigration and the inclusion of white men into military, Chicago faced a loss in supply of workers when needed most. Following the shortage of industrial workers in Chicago, the previously closed industrial jobs to African Americans became available. In the 1920s, blacks engaged in politics and in businesses which thrived exponentially.

Better pays and vibrant community met migrants’ expectations. However, these provisions caused racial tensions, a result out of the migrants' visions. White and Black workers regarded each other suspiciously, especially over unionization. Additionally, in exception to garment factories and meatpacking, blacks faced exclusion from the labor movement. Shortage of housing in Chicago made the processing of getting a home hard for every Chicagoans, although the migrants got particular onerous positions, and so they shifted from the overpriced and overcrowded Black Belt.

The Blacks peoples’