In honor of Local News Day, TCR is turning its lens toward the city’s past and present, exploring Chicago’s complex and often fraught history through photography. From entrenched segregation to powerful movements for advocacy, leadership, and justice, this project reflects on the forces that have shaped the city, and the people who continue to redefine it.
As part of this initiative, The Chicago Reporter is hosting a photography contest on May 14 centered on the theme “Justice,” inviting participants to capture what justice looks like in their communities today. The event will also feature keynote speaker Tonika Johnson, acclaimed artist and creator of the Folded Map Project, whose work illuminates the lasting impact of segregation in Chicago.
Bronzeville and Chicago’s Black Metropolis
Bronzeville, on Chicago’s South Side , emerged as a cultural and political hub during the Great Migration, when Black Southerners settled in the city amid strict segregation.
Bronzeville became a center of Black culture and life, home to institutions like the Chicago Defender and the Chicago Bee—publications led by figures including Anthony Overton and Marian Campfield. Landmarks like the Mecca Flats reflected both the neighborhood’s density and its vibrancy.
Together, Bronzeville’s history—and Chicago’s broader story—reveals a city shaped by segregation and inequality, but also by powerful traditions of Black journalism, community, and resistance.
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Outline for an Illinois Writers Project study of the African American press in Chicago, 1936-1942. (Courtesy of Chicago Public Library online database) -
Marion B. Campfield, who served as the City Editor at the Chicago Bee and Women’s Editor at the Chicago Defender, at the Chicago Defender office, 1948. (Chicago Public Library) -
1985 photo of Chicago Bee building. Image courtesy of National Park Service -
The Chicago Bee Public Library Branch is located at 3647 S. State Street, which once served as headquarters to the Chicago Bee newspaper. Photo: Chicago Public Library Archives, 1989. Credit: Gary Degnan.
The Stroll: Blues, Jazz and Community
As discriminatory housing practices like restrictive covenants and redlining confined Black residents to a narrow stretch of the South Side often called the “Black Belt,” cultural hubs like “the Stroll” took off.
In the history of Chicago blues and jazz, “the Stroll” was to a stretch of Bronzeville nightlife that was at the heart of Black entertainment. Lined with clubs, theaters, and bars, the Stroll drew crowds to hear blues and big band jazz, and to experience the energy of a thriving cultural scene.
Listen to History
Albert Ammons, born in Chicago in 1907, recorded a cover of “Mecca Flat Blues,” a song originally written in 1924 by Jimmy Blythe. The song taps into the energy, humor, and social life of the building and its neighborhood, reflecting crowded apartments, music, parties, and everyday interactions. At the same time, it hints at the pressures of racial segregation shaping Bronzeville.
Artists like Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington performed in venues along the Stroll. More than just a nightlife district, it was a symbol of Bronzeville’s cultural power during segregation, where music, business, and community life came together.
The Mecca Flats
Built in 1892 on the South Side just north of what is now Bronzeville, the Mecca Flats building was originally designed as a grand apartment building for middle-class white residents visiting the World’s Columbian Exposition.
As the neighborhood changed in the early 20th century, white residents moved out and Black families, largely shut out of housing elsewhere by segregation, moved in. Over time, the Mecca flats evolved into a vibrant, close-knit community and a cultural and social hub.
By the 1940s, the building sat in the path of expansion plans for the nearby Illinois Institute of Technology. The school purchased the property and sought to demolish it, arguing the structure was deteriorating. Residents resisted eviction, but amid broader patterns of urban renewal—which often displaced Black communities—the building was ultimately cleared.
In 1952, the Mecca Flats was demolished.
The demolition of the Mecca Flats in the 1950s erased a vibrant Bronzeville community, a loss directly tied to redlining and discriminatory urban policies that devalued Black neighborhoods.
What is “redlining” and where does the term come from?
Redlining was a discriminatory practice, mostly from the 1930s–1960s, in which banks, insurance companies, and government agencies systematically denied loans, mortgages, or insurance to people in certain communities—almost always Black neighborhoods—because of the racial makeup of the area.
- The term comes from the maps created by the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) in the 1930s, where neighborhoods were color-coded. Areas deemed “high risk” (mostly Black or immigrant neighborhoods) were outlined in red, signaling lenders to avoid them.
- The result: residents of redlined areas couldn’t get home loans or improvements, while white neighborhoods received investment, fueling segregation and wealth inequality that lasts today.
In Chicago, redlining concentrated Black residents in neighborhoods like Bronzeville, shaping housing, schools, and economic opportunity for generations.
Chicago’s first Black mayor
In 1983, Harold Washington, Chicago’s first Black mayor, was elected to office. He continued to serve until his death in 1987. Raised in Bronzeville, Washington was born in Cook County, earned a law degree from Northwestern University, and served in the U.S. Army during World War II.
Washington is credited for advocating for fair representation in city hiring, contracting, and services, helping historically excluded Black and Latino communities gain access to city resources.
He also prioritized investment in under-resourced neighborhoods rather than concentrating development only in downtown Chicago, aiming to reduce inequality and poverty.
What to contribute to capturing Chicago’s visual history?
Show Chicago’s story through your lens! Submit your photos for The Chicago Reporter’s Photography Contest on the theme of “justice”, and join us May 14 to celebrate the winners with keynote Tonika Johnson, creator of the Folded Maps Project.
Follow the prompts to resister for our contest and attend our in person event!
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