History of African Americans in Chicago

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Black Chicagoans

2017 Chicago data represents the African American population by Census Tract
Total population
757,971[1] (2021, est.)
Regions with significant populations
Southside Chicago, Westside Chicago, South Suburbs[2]
Languages
Inland Northern American English, African-American Vernacular English, African languages
Religion
Black Protestant[3]
Related ethnic groups
Black Southerners who migrated to Chicago during the Great Migration, Black Caribbeans, African immigrants

The history of African Americans in Chicago or Black Chicagoans dates back to Jean Baptiste Point du Sable's trading activities in the 1780s. Du Sable, the city's founder, was Haitian of African and French descent.^[4] Fugitive slaves and freedmen established the city's first Black community in the 1840s. By the late 19th century, the first Black person had been elected to office.

The Great Migrations from 1910 to 1960 brought hundreds of thousands of Black Americans from the South to Chicago, where they became an urban population. They created churches, community organizations, businesses, music, and literature. African Americans of all classes built a community on the South Side of Chicago for decades before the Civil Rights Movement, as well as on the West Side of Chicago. Residing in segregated communities, almost regardless of income, the Black residents of Chicago aimed to create communities where they could survive, sustain themselves, and have the ability to determine for themselves their own course in the History of Chicago.^[5]

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, African Americans accounted for 29% of the city's population, or approximately 800,000 people as of the 2020 census. As per 2023 Census estimates the metro area had just under 1.5 million residents claiming Black alone ancestry, making it the metropolitan area with the fourth-highest Black population after New York, Atlanta, and Washington DC.^[6]

The Black population in Chicago has been shrinking. Many Black Chicagoans have moved to the suburbs or Southern cities such as Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio.^[7][8]

Chicago also has a foreign-born Black population. Many of the African immigrants in Chicago are from Ethiopia and Nigeria.^[9]