African Americans have a long and complex history in Chicago beginning with Chicago’s first long term resident Jean Baptist Point Du Sable. Du Sable put Chicago on the map in 1780 when he established a settlement and fur trade post close to the mouth of the Chicago River. He is now revered as Chicago’s founder.
With its central location to the railroad lines and proximity to the Mississippi River, Chicago became an access point for migration. Thus, fugitive slaves and freedmen and women created Chicago’s first African American community in the 1840s. Abolitionists such as Ida B. Wells and Frederick Douglass flocked to Chicago to protest the World's Colombian Exposition in 1893 due to its exclusion of African Americans. News of the protest spread and soon Chicago’s African American community began to flourish with an increase of new migrants annually.
After the ratification of the 13th and 15th amendments, Chicago became one the most popular cities for resettlement of African Americans during the Great Migration. From the 1860s to the 1970s the African American population grew from 1,000 to 1,000,000.
Chicago drew in some of America’s greatest movers and shakers from prominent writers such as Richard Wright, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Lorraine Hansberry; to influential jazz musicians like Cab Calloway and Jelly Roll Morton; to inspirational artists such as William Edouard Scott, Charles Wilbert White, Archibald John Motley, Jr., and Eldzier Cortor; to charismatic politicians such as Harold Washington and Carol Moseley Braun, and of course, Former President Barak Obama.
Visitors should visit the DuSable Museum of African American History while in Chicago to learn more about African American history.
Resources:
http://interactive.wttw.com/a/dusable-to-obama-explore-early-chicago-worlds-fair-1893
https://www.chicagohistory.org/exhibition/chicago-crossroads-of-america/
http://chicagostories.org/black-chicago/