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Chicago's Great Migration Geography

Where did Black migrants settle in Chicago, and what constrained or enabled that settlement?

Executive summary

The two waves were demographically and geographically distinct: the first (c. 1916–1930) was confined to a dense South Side Black Belt by covenants and terror; the second (1940s–1960s) expanded southward past 90th Street and westward into North Lawndale and beyond, mediated by blockbusting, contract selling, and public-housing siting.

Settlement in both waves ran through three layers — first lodging (kin, rooming houses, YMCA), neighborhood clustering (the moving edge of the Black Belt), and tenure form (renting, lodging, kitchenettes, contracts) — and each layer had its own enablers and constraints. Organized violence enforced residential boundaries in both waves: 58 bombings (1917–1921) and the 1919 riot in the first; Trumbull Park (1953–1963) in the second.

Reception institutions — Olivet Baptist, the Wabash YMCA, the Defender, chain-migration networks — were the difference between arrival and homelessness for thousands, though their quantitative reach is undocumented. The kitchenette and the contract sale were structural twins: tenure forms that housed the excluded while extracting their wealth.

Evidence grades: VERIFIED = strong primary source or multiple corroborating sources; SUPPORTED = credible source(s), partly corroborated; PROVISIONAL = single credible source, uncorroborated; DISPUTED = sources conflict; UNRESOLVED = insufficient evidence.

Source: CultureTechLens