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National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Movements, and played a key role in the conference establishing the Once in Chicago, Wells continued her long-standing antilynching campaign, joined the women's Wells possessed a history of militant activism long before she moved to Chicago and married Barnett in 1895. Which championed racial solidarity and militant protest. Barnett established Chicago's first black While not yet confined to the city's nascent ghettos, blacks generally found housing available only within emerging enclaves.Ī new cadre of leaders emerged from the business and professional elite to address these issues. A state law against discrimination in public places followed in 1885, but it was rarely enforced and did nothing to address widespread employment discrimination. The state extended the franchise to African Americans in 1870 and ended legally sanctioned
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Increasingly concentrated on the city'sĬhicago's black population developed a class structure composed of a large number ofĪnd other manual laborers, along with a small but growing contingent of middle- and upper-class business and professional elites.įormal segregation in Chicago slowly began to break down in the 1870s. Moreover, black Chicagoans could neither vote nor testify against whites in court.įinding their newly won liberties circumscribed by the overthrow of Reconstruction, small but growing numbers of black southerners made their way to Chicago, pushing the city's African American population from approximately 4,000 in 1870 to 15,000 in 1890. Were also active, but African Americans still suffered from segregation in various public venues, such as John Jones, a tailor, headed most black antislavery and antidiscrimination efforts within the city until his death in 1879.
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Fugitive slaves and freedmen established the city's first black community in the 1840s, with the population nearing 1,000 by 1860. Beginning with John Baptiste Point DuSable's trading activities in the 1780s, blacks have had a long history in Chicago.
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