The Urban League also made an inquiry into the numbers of Negroes leaving and arriving in the week following the riot, and when the strongest efforts were being made to induce a return of migrants. During this period 261 Negroes came to Chicago and 219 left the city. Of the 219 leaving, eighty-three gave some southern state as their destination. For the most part, they were persons returning from vacations in the North, and Chicago Negroes going South to visit or on business. Some were rejoining their families. Fourteen were leaving because of the riot. None, however, indicated any intention of going South to work.
It is clear that migrant Negroes are not returning South. On the contrary, there is a small but continuous stream of migration to the industrial centers of the North. No great number of Negroes returned to the South even during the trying unemployment period in the early part of 1921. Census figures for Chicago for 1920 show a number much smaller than the usual estimates of the size of the Negro population during the period of the heaviest migration. This may be accounted for by the fact that Chicago has been used as a re-routing point to other northern cities. The decrease from 1918 undoubtedly means that some returned to the South, but it is apparent that the great majority of the migrants remain, despite the hardships attending shortage of work.
CHAPTER IV
THE NEGRO POPULATION OF CHICAGO
A. DISTRIBUTION AND DENSITY
The Negro population of Chicago, as reported by the Federal Bureau of the Census, was 44,103 in 1910 and 109,594 in 1920. The increase during the decade was therefore 65,491, or 148.5 per cent. Negroes constituted 2 per cent of the city's total population in 1910 and 4.1 per cent in 1920. The increase in the white population during the decade was 450,047, or 21 per cent, bringing the white population up to 2,589,104 in 1920. The remainder of the population consisted of 3,007 Chinese, Japanese, and Indians, of whom there were 2,123 in 1910. Chicago's total population in 1920 was 2,701,705.
In order to indicate where the Negro population of the city lived in 1910 and in 1920, the Commission sought the co-operation of the Census Bureau. On the basis of a rough preliminary survey, certain areas in which it was evident that the main groups of Negroes lived were delimited, and liberal margins allowed to include scattered residents living near the main areas. For these areas the Census Bureau supplied figures showing the total and Negro population by census-enumeration districts. Since each enumeration district embraced from one or two to six city blocks in the more crowded portions of the city, the data thus made available enabled the Commission to prepare maps showing with a fair degree of accuracy where Negroes in Chicago lived in 1910 and in 1920, and also their proportion to the total population in these units of area.
The 510 enumeration districts covered for 1910 included 40,739, or 92.3 per cent of the 44,103 Negroes reported by the Census Bureau for that year; and the 730 enumeration districts covered for 1920 included 106,089, or 96.8 per cent of the 109,594 Negroes reported for that year. The small remaining number of Negroes scattered throughout the parts of the city not embraced in these areas in 1910 and 1920 included many janitors living in the buildings where they worked, and others employed in private homes and living on the premises, thus making their presence inconspicuous among white residents. The areas in which 40,739 Negroes were living in 1910 contained a total population of 657,044, the Negroes thus constituting 6.2 per cent of the total. The areas in which 106,089 Negroes lived in 1920 contained a total population of 779,279, the Negroes thus constituting about 13 per cent of the total.
The outstanding fact concerning these data for 1910 and 1920 is that the large increase in Negro population did not bring into existence any new large colonies but resulted in the expansion and increased density of areas in which groups of Negroes already lived in 1910.
