BLACK CHICAGOland TIMELINE

1779: Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, a free African man of French Haitian descent and first permanent non-Native person, settled on the north bank of the Chicago River and founded what would become Chicago 

1817: Northern border of Illinois is moved north placing Chicago in Illinois 

1818: Illinois is admitted into the Union as a free state

1819 (to 1865): Black Codes are enforced

1830 (and onward): settlers in eastern Will County

and southern Cook County provided assistance to  freedom seekers with safe houses along the old Sauk Trail corridor

1833: Chicago is incorporated as a town

1837: Chicago is incorporated as a city

1840: Enslaved persons who were fugitives and freedmen establish the first Black community in Chicago 

1844: Quinn Chapel AME Church is established

1848: Illinois and Michigan Canal is completed

1850s: Railroads in Chicagoland develop with hundreds of enslaved persons who were fugitives using these routes to seek freedom in Canada 

1853: Black delegates in Chicago convened at the first Convention of the Colored Citizens of Illinois to protest the Black laws

1865: Union Stockyards open 

1871: John Jones, the first Black Cook County commissioner, is elected into office 

1871: The Great Chicago Fire kills close to 300 people, destroys almost four square miles of the city, and leaves many residents homeless

1874: School segregation is outlawed in Chicago

1878: Ferdinand Barnett founded The Conservator, the first Black newspaper in Chicago

1885: Segregation is outlawed in public spaces in Chicago 

1885: First signs of policy game emerge

1889: Jane Addams establishes Hull House 

1891: The city of Harvey was founded and had one of the earliest small Black communities in the South Suburbs, Chicago Southland, and the Calumet Region

1891: Provident Hospital, the first Black hospital in Chicago, opens on the South Side 

1893: World's Columbian Exposition takes place in the city 

1893: The city of Chicago Heights was founded and had one of the earliest, small Black communities in the South Suburbs, Chicago Southland, and the Calumet Region

1893: Dr. Daniel Hale Williams performs first successful open heart surgery in America at Provident Hospital 

1894: Ida Platt becomes the first Black woman to earn her law license in Illinois 

1895: Ferdinand Barnett sells The Conservator to his wife Ida B. Wells

1896: Shaffer Chapel (African Methodist Episcopal Church), one of the oldest Black congregations in the South Suburbs (Chicago Southland), is established

1899: Amanda Berry Smith founded one of the first orphanages for Black children in Illinois in Harvey

1900: Flow of the Chicago River is reversed

1904: Old Settlers Social Club is formed

1905: Publisher and editor Robert Sengstacke Abbott debuts The Chicago Defender

1908: Jesse Binga opens Binga State Bank, the first Black owned bank in Chicago

1908: Mt. Glenwood Memory Gardens, the oldest Black cemetery in the region, is established

1909: Daniel Burnham and Edward H. Bennett introduce the "Plan of Chicago"

1911: The Chicago American Giants (an all Black baseball team) is founded

1911: The Lincoln Cemetery, organized by Black funeral directors, is established in Blue Island

1915: Onset of the Great Migration (first wave)

1915: Jazz debuts in Chicago

1915: Oscar Stanton De Priest is elected as the first Black alderman in Chicago

1916: Thomas Andrew Dorsey (father of gospel music) migrates to Chicago

1916: The Chicago Urban League is established 

1917: The Village of Robbins, the first northern municipality solely governed by Black people, is founded

1919: The Chicago Race Riot of 1919 (23 Black people were killed)

1919: Joseph Bibb debuts the Chicago Whip ("Don’t Spend Your Money campaign" in the Black Belt)

1919: Claude Barnett forms the Associated Negro Press

1920: Mississippi Delta blues arrives in Chicago 

1920s: Robbins becomes a center for Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association 

1924: Vivian Harsh becomes the Chicago Public Library’s first Black librarian

1925: Pullman Porters: Brotherhood of the Sleeping Car Porters Union is formed (first all Black union)

1926: Anthony Overton debuts The Chicago Bee 

1926: Harlem Globetrotters is established in Chicago

1926: Carter G. Woodson launches Negro History Week, which eventually becomes Black History Month 

1927: Writer and poet Richard Wright (Native Son, Black Boy) arrives in Chicago 

1928: SB Fuller, one of the nations first Black millionaires, arrives in Chicago

1929: The Bud Billiken Parade debuts in Bronzeville

1931: Cornelius Coffey and John C. Robinson establish the Challenger Aero Club (airfield to teach Black aviators how to fly at Robbins Airport). Janet Harmon Bragg provides the first airplanes for the airport and school. She is also the first Black woman to earn a commercial pilot's license 

1933: A Century of Progress (World’s Fair)

1933: William L. Dawson is elected to second ward alderman

1937: Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) is established 

1938: First housing projects in Chicago are built (Jane Addams Houses, Lathrop Homes, and the Trumbull Park Homes) 

1940: Onset of the Great Migration (second wave)

1940: Photographer and writer Gordon Parks moves to the South Side and opens a portrait studio at the South Side Community Art Center

1942: Robert Rochon Taylor, great-grandfather of Valerie Jarrett, senior advisor to President Barack Obama, is appointed as the first Black Chairman of the Chicago Housing Authority

1943: Eric Monte is born (creator of the movie Cooley High and television shows Good Times and What’s Happening!) 

1945: John H. Johnson debuts Ebony Magazine

1945: The landmark study Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City is published (by Black co-authors Horace Cayton and St. Clair Drake)

1947: Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) is established 

1948: Destination Freedom (radio drama that highlighted achievements of African Americans) debuts on NBC|WMAQ

1950: Founding of Chess Records 

1951: John H. Johnson debuts Jet Magazine 

1955: Emmett Till is murdered in Money, Mississippi 

1955: Richard J. Daley takes office as mayor 

1959: Lorraine Hansberry’s, A Raisin in the Sun debuts on Broadway 

1960: The Woodlawn Organization is formed

1961: DuSable Museum of African American History is established

1964: Jesse Jackson Jr. arrives in Chicago

1966: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King move to|march in Chicago 

1968: Democratic National Convention (Mayor Daley issues "shoot to kill" order)

1968: AfriCobra (African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists), a collective of Black artists, is established

1968: Afro American Patrolmen’s League, consisting of Black police officers to protect Black communities after Mayor Daley’s shoot to kill order, is established

1968: Riots due to the death of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. break out on the West Side

1969: Chairman Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, members of the Black Panther Party, are savagely murdered 

1970: Don Cornelius debuts Soul Train in Chicago

1970: Onset of the new Great Migration (third wave reverse)

1971: Union Stockyards close 

1971: Joseph G, Bertrand, the first Black man to hold a major elective office in Chicago, is sworn in as City Treasurer during Daley's fifth mayoral inauguration

1971: Tom Burrell founded Burrell Communications (the nation's largest African American-owned marketing firm)

1971: Anna Langford becomes the first Black woman elected to Chicago City Council

1971: Reverend Jesse Jackson Jr. starts Rainbow|PUSH on the South Side 

1972: Early rudiments of house music and house culture emerge in the Black gay and bisexual community in South Shore

1972: Mosque Maryam (Temple #2-headquarters of the Nation of Islam) is established in Chicago