Dorsey choreographer Catherine Dunham women’s aviation pioneer Bessie Coleman author Richard Wright activist and writer Ida B. Scores of this country’s greatest entertainers, intellectuals, artists, and writers hailed from Bronzeville, including musicians Louis Armstrong, Nat “King” Cole, Sam Cook, Dinah Washington, Quincy Jones, and Herbie Hancock gospel music pioneers Mahalia Jackson and Thomas A. Venues like the Savoy Ballroom-Regal Theater complex and the Sunset Cafe rivaled Harlem’s Apollo Theater in importance in music, film, and live performance. The Wabash Avenue YMCA established the first Black History Month. The Chicago Defender and Chicago Bee were African-American daily newspapers of national influence and distribution. Daniel Hale Williams, an African American, pioneered open-heart surgery in Bronzeville’s Provident Hospital. Bronzeville’s institutions grew to have national influence rivaling, and even exceeding, those of New York’s Harlem.įounded by Jesse Binga, Binga Bank was Chicago’s first Black-owned life insurance, realty, and financial institution. African Americans were restricted to live in the Black Belt in white-owned housing that was largely dilapidated and densely populated yet more expensive than housing in white areas.įorced to live in this isolated area, Bronzeville’s residents toiled hard and cooperatively to establish a full-fledged community with business, culture, and community institutions that did not have the racial restrictions enforced in most parts of the city. The reality, however, fell far short of these promises, as conditions were still repressive and segregated. The Great Migration, when African Americans left the South for Chicago with the promise of better jobs and reduced oppression, began in 1916. Many consider Bronzeville to stretch from 18th Street all the way south to 67th Street. While the boundaries of Bronzeville are debatable, there is general agreement that the heart of Bronzeville is from 31st Street south to Pershing Road and east from today's Dan Ryan Expressway to Lake Michigan. Bronzeville, also known as the “Black Metropolis” and the “Black Belt,” is the center of African-American history on Chicago’s South Side, just 10 minutes south of downtown.
0 kommentar(er)
