These men and women find many kinds of work in the neighboring towns—at the mills, on the railroads, in the factories. Many of the women work in the factory of Libby, McNeil & Libby. Their wages go into payments for their homes. Men and women together are living as pioneer families lived—working and sacrificing to feel the independence of owning a bit of ground and their own house.
C. THE NEGRO COMMUNITY
I. THE BEGINNING OF THE NEGRO COMMUNITY
Negroes have been living in Chicago since it was founded. In fact, Jean Baptiste Point de Saible, a San Domingan Negro, was the first settler and in 1790 built the first house, a rude hut on the north bank of the Chicago River near what is now the Michigan Boulevard Bridge.
There are records of Negroes owning property in Chicago as early as 1837, the year of its incorporation as a city. In 1844 there were at least five Negro property owners and in 1847 at least ten. Their property was in the original first and second wards of the city, one on Lake Street, others on Madison, Clark, and Harrison, and Fifth Avenue. In 1848 the first Negro church property was purchased at the corner of Jackson and Buffalo streets, indicating the presence of the first colony of Negroes. In 1850 the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law caused many to flee for safety to Canada, many of the property owners disposing of their holdings at a great loss. In 1854 Negroes held two pieces of church property in the same general locality. Although the great majority lived on Clark and Dearborn streets north of Harrison Street, there was a tendency among the property-owning class to invest in outlying property. Some of them bought property as far south as what is now Thirty-third Street.
The year of the Great Fire, 1871, Negroes owned four pieces of church property. That fire stopped at Harrison Street and did not consume all of the Negro settlement. A second large fire in 1874 spread northeast and burned 812 buildings over an area of forty-seven acres. With the rebuilding of the city they were pushed southward to make room for the business district.
In 1900 the most congested area of Negro residence, called the "Black Belt," was a district thirty-one blocks long and four blocks wide, extending from Harrison Street on the north to Thirty-ninth Street on the south, between Wabash and Wentworth avenues. Although other colonies had been started in other parts of the city, notably the West Side, at least 50 per cent of the 1900 Negro population of 30,150 lived in this area. As this main area of Negro residence grew, the proportion of Negroes to the total Negro population living in it increased until in 1920 it contained 90 per cent of the Negroes of the city.
II. THE ORGANIZATION OF THE NEGRO COMMUNITY
In the discussion of race contacts attention is called to the peculiar conditions which compel Negroes of the city to develop many of their own institutions and agencies. Partly from necessity and partly from choice, they have established their own churches, business enterprises, amusement places, and newspapers. Living and associating for the most part together, meeting in the same centers for face-to-face relations, trusting to their own physicians, lawyers, and ministers, a compact community with its own fairly definite interests and sentiments has grown up.
The institutions within the Negro community that have been developed to aid it in maintaining itself and promoting its own welfare, are of four general types: (1) commercial and industrial enterprises; (2) organizations for social intercourse; (3) religious organizations; (4) agencies for civic and social betterment.