Chicago Civil Rights Tour

This tour is designed to give a context to the city in which we live and move around every day. The city of Chicago has a long and rich history. Like all history, it can be examined from many angles and through many lenses. On this occasion, we will limit our focus to the on-going fight for civil rights on behalf of African American peoples in Chicago. Though the American Civil Rights movement is generally narrowly defined as having taken place between 1954 and 1968, we will look at events significant to this struggle reaching back to abolitionism and bearing fruit in the contemporary Black Lives Matter movement.

Our tour seeks to give background through highlighting events that occurred here in Chicago. Though these events all had implications and impact far beyond this locale, we are focusing on sites that we might drive past on a daily basis without ever knowing what took place there. Chicago is a diverse city with a complex and layered history— so many stories of the many peoples of Chicago could be highlighted. However, in this tour we will limit ourselves to this particular slice of history.

Several videos are meant to be watched along the way to give fuller background and a more fuller history, though honestly, we will just be skimming the surface! There are a variety of sources for these videos and all have been cited so that you can look into these matters further. Here are the sites that will be visited:

1. Ida B. Wells-Barnett House, 3624 S Martin Luther King Drive

2. National A. Philip Randolph Pullman Porter Museum, 10406 S Maryland Avenue

3. Daley's Restaurant, 809 E 63rd Street

4. Roberts Temple Church of God, 4021 S State Street

5. Dr. Martin Luther King’s North Lawndale Home, 2337 W Monroe Street

6. Fred Hampton’s Home, 1550 S Hamlin Avenue

7. Site of Laquan McDonald Shooting, 4100 S Pulaski Road

If one seeks to examine the influence of African Americans in Chicago and to focus on the issue of Civil Rights, one might start at the very beginning of non-native settlement in Chicago. The man long credited as the “Founder of Chicago” — the first permanent non-indigenous settler— was of African and French descent. Jean Baptiste Point du Sable and his wife, Kitihawa (a Potawatomi woman), lived at the mouth of the Chicago River for nearly 20 years before selling their land to John Kinzie. Though long overlooked in public recognition in favor of Kinzie (who was of Scottish descent and committed the first murder in Chicago), of late the city has honored Point du Sable with several memorials including the DuSable Bridge at Michigan Avenue near the place of his early settlement. We will not visit this site on our tour for the sake of time, but the next time you are near the Tribune Tower take note of the relief on the bridge depicting the “founders” of Chicago.