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 

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)

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

1972: Hills v. Gautreaux landmark case is decided