Black history and Chicago history go all the way back to the city’s founding. Haitian-American pioneer/trader John Baptiste Point DuSable is known as the Father of Chicago because he established a trading post in the 1780s near where the Tribune Tower currently stands. He left in 1800, but nearly a half-century later, that former trading post would officially became Chicago.
Thousands of black southerners first made their way north to Chicago during Reconstruction after the Civil War. Then in the first half of the 20th century, hundreds of thousands of African-Americans settled in Chicago as part of “The Great Migration”—many attracted by Chicago’s abundant need for work in the stockyards, steel mills, and factories.
As a result, Chicago has a number of different Black historic landmarks to see during Black History Month that range from churches, newspapers, cultural sites, and the houses of civil rights leaders.
Here are 10 sites to see this February.
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