History of Segregation in Chicago
Chicago, like any major city is immensely racially and economically diverse. In order to understand how the city is divided today, we must understand how Chicago came to be segregated. As you stroll downtown, you see people of all races, cultures, and classes enjoying Chicago’s cuisine, shops and sights. However, don't confuse Chicago’s diversity with the belief that it is integrated. Chicago is historically known for holding the inglorious distinction of being one of the country’s most segregated cities. African American Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, known as the “father of Chicago,” was the first to settle in Chicago in the 1770s. Chicago was named a town in 1833 and then incorporated as a city in 1837. In 1877 Jim Crow Laws, which enforced racial segregation, were implemented in the south after the Reconstruction Era. To escape the racist laws, seven million African Americans migrated north, in what is known as the Great Migration, for better opportunity. Slightly more than 500,000 African Americans resided in Chicago. The cultural impact of Great Migration would change Chicago forever. However, not all Chicagoans enjoyed the integration of African Americans into the city. Laws and systems, such as redlining, were put into place to oppress those of color, including African Americans, Mexican Americans, and Chinese Americans, by confining them to certain areas in Chicago. When they defied the boundaries and began to move into “white areas,” whites began to flee to the suburbs in the so-called “white flight.” Today, we still see the impact of the Jim Crow Laws, the Great Migration and redlining in a number of ways, mainly in regards to housing and the public school system.
Jim Crow Era
“It shall be unlawful for a negro and white person to play together or in company with each other in any game of cards or dice, dominoes or checkers.” -Birmingham, Alabama, 1930 (1)
This quote is the essence of what is known as the Jim Crow era, a time in U.S history when laws enforced racial segregation in the South under the Jim Crow Laws. The segregation and disenfranchisement laws took effect at the end of the Reconstruction era in 1877 and ended during the civil rights movement. However, legal scholar Michelle Alexander suggests that there is a new Jim Crow era at our present, the mass incarceration of African Americans. In an interview with NPR she explains, “although Jim Crow laws are now off the books, millions of blacks arrested for minor crimes remain marginalized and disfranchised, trapped by a criminal justice system that has forever branded them as felons and denied them basic rights and opportunities that would allow them to become productive, law-abiding citizens.” (NPR 2012) In fact, this does sound similar to the codified system of racial apartheid that dominated the American South for three quarters of a century beginning in the 1890s known as the Jim Crow era. The Jim Crow laws required separation of whites from “persons of color” in public places. “Persons of color” referred to anyone who was not white, including those of Latino and Asian descent. The laws affected almost every aspect of daily life by mandating segregation of schools, parks, libraries, water fountains, restaurants, public transportation, and restrooms. Diane Nash, an American civil rights activist, and a leader and strategist of the student wing of the Civil Rights Movement, recalls, "Travel in the segregated South for black people was humiliating. The very fact that there were separate facilities was to say to black people and white people that blacks were so subhuman and so inferior that we could not even use the public facilities that white people used." (2)This was codified on both local and state levels due to the decision “separate but equal” in 1896’s Plessy v Ferguson. Segregation laws began to change during the civil rights movement. In 1954, the decision of Brown v Board of Education of Topeka stated that segregation in public schools is unconstitutional. Due to the tireless effort of civil rights activists, The Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964 which superseded all state and local laws requiring segregation. The Civil Rights Act should have been the end of the Jim Crow era in Chicago and in our nation. However, we still see segregation in Chicago, overwhelming in public schools, neighborhoods and housing to be discussed in the what follows. So, along with Michelle Alexander, I too believe that perhaps we are in a “new era” of Jim Crow.
The Great Migration’s Impact on Chicago
This year marks the 102nd anniversary of the Great Migration in Chicago, a time when hundreds of thousands of African Americans left the South for better opportunities. Chicago attracted just over 500,000 of the approximately seven million African Americans who left the South during these decades. When African Americans arrived in Chicago, they were restricted to the Black Belt on the South Side. Even as overcrowded conditions cramped black families, a host of real estate policies prevented them from moving to white areas, for instance redlining which will be discussed later. The Great Migrations flowed for six decades and became the foundation of Chicago’s African American industrial working class. Prior to the Great Migrations, African Americans constituted two percent of Chicago's population, approximately 44,000; by 1970, they made up 33 percent, roughly one million. Although the Great Migration is known for its impact on cultural life in Chicago which is most evident in Southern blues music, cuisine, and churches, “it also set the stage for the lingering hypersegregation, a division between black and white that shaped the Chicago experience.” (3) The hypersegregation that began during the Great Migration is a current problem. Moore suggests that because white people forced blacks into second-class citizenry, it led to low-quality housing, overcrowded schools and other discriminatory treatment in Chicago. (4) Nonetheless, Chicago became the heart for “black America” and that has forever changed our city.
The Effects of Redlining in Chicago
Redlining is not a problem unique to Chicago. Two hundred twenty-five cities across the country have been and continue to be affected. Understanding the long history of discrimination by housing officials is essential to promoting equitable public policy and practice today. By definition, “Redlining is the practice of arbitrarily denying or limiting financial services to specific neighborhoods, generally because its residents are people of color or are poor.” (5) It began in Chicago when a number of scholars in sociology and economics helped shaped the housing policy which was later studied by then real-estate specialist Homer Hoyt at the University of Chicago in 1930. HOLC color-coded maps were created to assign values to neighborhoods. Green areas were the “best” investments, blue areas were “still desirable,” yellow areas were “definitely declining” and red areas were “hazardous.” The maps show black neighborhoods drenched in red. This was the beginning of the pattern of how discrimination by banks kept people of color from building wealth. Hoyt took what he learned at the University of Chicago with him when he became the principal housing economist for the Federal Housing Authority. It wasn’t unit the mid 1960s that the negative effects of redlining were recognized by policy makers. The Fair Housing Act of 1968, which prohibited housing discrimination, was implemented, however, it did not make a difference. Racial discrimination in lending continued. African Americans and Latinos continued to be routinely denied conventional mortgage loans or received them at rates far higher than whites. Redlining made it nearly impossible for African Americans to build credit and to move out of neighborhoods of the South Side of Chicago where black neighborhoods did not receive the same quality of city services. Areas that once looked promising later became another slum. In 2016, WBEZ reported rampant discrimination in Chicago home loans in the 1930s are still being felt today. “Studies have found proprietary credit score algorithms to have a discriminatory impact on borrowers of color.” (6) This long-term effect shows why today, the homeownership gap is wider is wider between whites and African Americans than it was in the Jim Crow era. Willings states that so called “good” and “bad” neighborhoods are due to the wide array of public and private investment influences that shape the quality of neighborhoods, not the inhabitants. (7) The effects of redlining didn’t stop at housing, as segregation in schools followed residential segregation patterns.
Segregation in Chicago Public Schools
I teach on the near South Side of Chicago at McClellan Elementary in Bridgeport. When you walk into McClellan Elementary, you might be inspired to believe that Chicago Public schools share the same diversity, just as if you were to take a walk downtown and believe Chicago to be culturally intertwined, Chicago and Chicago Public Schools, CPS, are far from this picture of harmony. In fact, the segregation of CPS reminds me of a quote from the Jim Crow era, “Separate schools shall be maintained for the children of the white and colored races.” (8) Chicago schools are barely more integrated than they were 54 years ago when Brown v Board of Education ruled segregated schools unconstitutional. Housing segregation has a direct correlation to school segregation and even though residential segregation has slightly decreased, school segregation has increased for African American students in Chicago. If we analyze the history of CPS, we can see this segregation affects one of the most basic elements of black lives, educational opportunity. CPS supported school segregation by drawing school attendance lines to match racial segregation patterns. They also supported segregation by allowing white students to transfer out of African American schools and overcrowding those schools. These practices continued well after the 1954 Supreme Court Ruling Brown v Board of Education as well as after the passing of the Civil Rights Act in 1964. In 1971, 85 percent of all black students in CPS were in intensely segregated schools and roughly 40 years later, in 2012, 70 percent of African American students attended intensely segregated schools. An intensely segregated school is one where 90% of the student body is African American. (9) From 1971 to 2015, the number of CPS students who attend school where are 90% or more African American students jumps from 35 percent to 42 percent. (10) This data thus proves that CPS is becoming more segregated. The problem with school segregation in Chicago is not only its connection with ingrained personal beliefs and its impact on beliefs that could be changed in a different atmosphere, with the resulting failure to decrease racial prejudice, but the disportionate school closings of African American segregated schools. One out of four intensely segregated black schools were closed, phased-out or turned around from 2001 to 2012. (11) Just in 2013 when the mass school closing crisis occurred, of the 50 public schools that were closing, 94 percent had majority African American school populations, 86 percent were intensely segregated schools with a population of students over 90 percents African American and more than 70 percent of closed schools had a majority of African American teachers and student population. (12) The other percentage affected schools with majority Latino population. The segregation of the city is not an excuse for the pursuit of policies that intensify segregation and worse assault the school communities that have endured the weight of segregation’s harmful effects. Despite being known for having some of the best public schools in the nation, in Chicago we see public schools closing around us and more selective enrollment, with magnet and charter schools opening. The fight to keep public schools open in predominantly Latino and African American communities has been a continuous fight. Dating back to 1962, parents have fought for educational equity in some of the most under-resourced communities. Just in 2015, parents, staff and community members led a successful 34-day hunger strike to keep Dyett High School, in the historically black neighborhood of Bronzeville, open. The segregation of Chicago Public Schools doesn’t just impact those in the front line, but the entire city.
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