Chicago’s first settler was a black man - Jean Baptiste Point du Sable who built his home on the banks of the Chicago River in the 1770s.
More than 200 years later, Oprah Winfrey said, “My first day in Chicago, September 4, 1983. I set foot in this city, and just walking down the street, it was like roots, like the motherland. I knew I belonged here.”
In the years between the two, the contributions of great African Americans with Chicago connections have shaped virtually every arena of society in the city and the world – from early activists Ferdinand L. Barnett and his wife Ida B. Wells; politicians Oscar De Priest and Ed Wright; to literary artists Richard Wright, Margaret Walker, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Lorraine Hansberry; boxing champion Joe Louis; Democratic congressman William L. Dawson; Mayor Harold Washington; Barack Obama, America’s first African American candidate for U.S. President, and countless other History Makers.
Chicago’s diverse black music scene – molded by Thomas A. Dorsey, the father of Gospel; jazz greats Louis Armstrong, Alberta Hunter, and Joseph “King” Oliver and rhythm & blues icons Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Jimmy Rogers, Howlin’ Wolf, and Buddy Guy – continues to send shockwaves around the globe.
See where history was – and continues to be – made via City of Chicago tours which spotlight treasured landmarks in historic Bronzeville and other neighborhoods settled by hundreds of thousands of African Americans during “The Great Migration” and at the DuSable Museum of African American History – the first of its type in the country to preserve and interpret the experiences and achievements of African Americans.