1919

Housing Conditions and Segregation

By the end of 1919, close to one million African Americans had left the South. In the decade between 1910 and 1920, the Black population of Chicago grew by 148 percent. Factors such as the rapid migration to Chicago, low housing stock, and racist policies and actions that maintained a rigid color line worked together to create a situation in which African American migrants were forced to compete for housing in Chicago’s already crowded neighborhoods. After the U.S. Supreme Court declared racially based housing ordinances unconstitutional in 1917, many white residential neighborhoods found a way to maintain the color line by creating local contracts that required white property owners to agree not to sell to African Americans. These agreements, known as restrictive covenants, would remain legal until the Supreme Court struck them down in 1948. Restrictive covenants led to the development of what some historians have called “Black metropolises” or the “Black Belt.” In Chicago, the Black Belt was situated in the South Side, stretching from Twenty-Second Street to Fifty-First Street.  
With such a large population confined to under thirty blocks, overcrowding was a major issue, as numerous families inhabited small dwellings that were already old and dilapidated. Many of these apartment buildings lacked basic plumbing and usually only had one bathroom per floor. By 1934, a census estimated that Black households contained on average seven individuals, while white households on average contained four. Since the buildings were so overcrowded, building inspections and garbage collection were below the minimum mandatory requirements for healthy sanitation, contributing to a 16 percent higher infant mortality rate in the Black Belt. Racial strife would continue to rise as ethnic whites in the surrounding neighborhoods of the Black Belt refused to allow African Americans to reside in their neighborhoods.  

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