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Boarding-house keepers and kitchenette landladies (sector)

CTL-E-1353 · Practice · other · 1910s-1940s (and continuing)

PROVISIONAL evidence grade of this record

Renting rooms and running boarding houses was a major women's income strategy in 1920s Black Chicago, driven by overcrowding and low wages; it functioned as a dispersed, largely unrecorded lodging industry. Named keepers are almost entirely absent from the secondary record.

Notes

Merged into canonical KG 2026-10-03 from ECON-001; source entity IDs: CTL-DR-ECON-001:ECON-014; source research type(s): sector.

Sources

Record CTL-E-1353 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · evidence grade: PROVISIONAL · 2 sources · CTL research: ECON-001.
Directory: all entity records · the knowledge graph

Cite this record

Cite as: CultureTechLens, “Boarding-house keepers and kitchenette landladies (sector) (CTL-E-1353),” CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph, October 2026. https://culturetechlens.com/graph/entities/ctl-e-1353/

Chicago: CultureTechLens. “Boarding-house keepers and kitchenette landladies (sector) (CTL-E-1353).” CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph. Chicago, IL: CultureTechLens, 2026. https://culturetechlens.com/graph/entities/ctl-e-1353/
APA: CultureTechLens. (2026). Boarding-house keepers and kitchenette landladies (sector) (CTL-E-1353) [Entity record]. CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph. https://culturetechlens.com/graph/entities/ctl-e-1353/
MLA: CultureTechLens. “Boarding-house keepers and kitchenette landladies (sector) (CTL-E-1353).” CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph, 2026, https://culturetechlens.com/graph/entities/ctl-e-1353/

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From the Archive

The archive in pictures

Black Chicago’s musical record, kept frame by frame. Photographs from the CultureTechLens research record — rights-cleared, credited, and cited like everything else here.

Chicago Blues All-Stars performing live at Buddy Guy’s Legends, Chicago
Chicago Blues All-Stars performing live at Buddy Guy’s Legends, ChicagoPhoto: BluesAllstars, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Chuck Berry, publicity photo, 1957
Chuck Berry, publicity photo, 1957Photo: Universal Attractions (publicity photo), Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons
In a booth at a South Side tavern, Chicago, 1941
In a booth at a South Side tavern, Chicago, 1941Photo: Russell Lee, FSA-OWI, Public Domain, via Library of Congress

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