The Second Treaty of Chicago was signed on September 26, 1833, between the U.S. Government and the United Nation of Chippewa, Ottawa and Potawatomi Indians. This treaty signed over land including northside Chicago to the US government for settlement. At the time, Potawatomi villages occupied Chicago's north side, with trails and sites in present-day Uptown.
Swiss, German, and Luxembourgian farmers began setting up homesteads in the Uptown area. They grew celery, fruits, and flowers. They eventually became the Lakeview Township, headed by Swiss-born Conrad Sulzer.
The Graceland Cemetery was to be the burial grounds for Chicago's early industrial elite, with elaborate tombs dotting the sprawling grounds. It was designed by renowned landscaper O. C. Simonds, who also owned a homestead in Montrose.
Lakeview Township - present-day Uptown - becomes part of the city of Chicago, founded in 1833.
The Standard Vaudeville Theater was built in what eventually became the Bank of Chicago building in 1947 (1050 W Wilson Ave). Before Bank of Chicago and after Vaudeville, it was the Fidelity Trust and Savings Bank between 1922 and December 19th 1929, and the Uptown State Bank, from Dec 21st, 1929 to 1938. In 1938, the Uptown State Bank moved to the northwest corner of Broadway and Lawrence and became the Uptown National Bank of Chicago. Vaudeville theater was a thriving business at the time, but started losing money after the advent of movie theaters. As a result, the Theater closed its doors in 1922.
The Northwestern Elevated Railway Company leased track from Milwaukee Road and began operating a train service from downtown Chicago to Uptown/Wilson; track was elevated to that point. The extension of the train lines from Chicago marked the beginning of Uptown becoming a residential area for those who worked in the city.
Essanay Studios was built on Argyle street at a time when Uptown was the home of America's early movie industry. Essanay Studios is now most famous for having signed on Charlie Chaplin, and for introducing stars like Gloria Swanson. When Chaplin, and indeed the movie industry, moved to the warmer climes of the West coast, the Studio went into decline by 1915, and closing up by the 1920s.
German Jews were among the earliest migrants to the new city of Chicago. The 1870s saw the influx of Jewish groups from Russia and Eastern Europe, diversifying the community. By 1910, small Jewish communities had formed in the north side, including present-day Uptown. Early Jewish migrants were small vendors and peddlers, eventually growing into stores and large businesses. Source: Encyclopedia of Chicago
Preston Bradley takes over the People's Church in Uptown, becoming a major early figure in Uptown who spoke about social justice and racial equality, openly condemning white supremacy in his sermons. He built up the People's Church as a hugely popular, progressive institution that stressed civic values, a tradition that continues over a century later. Pastor Bradley's sermons were attended by hundreds, and even after a new "Uptown Temple" was built on Lawrence to seat over 1700 people, many were turned away because of space constraints, and thousands tuned in over radio. Bradley openly condemned the film Birth of a Nation, and was denied a passport to Germany because of his criticism of Hitler in the 1930s. In 1943, early civil rights leader A. Philip Randolph gave a speech about race relations at the Church.
The sprawling Green Mill Sunken Gardens opened as a leisure space. Soon after, it was sold. Most of the land was converted to the Uptown Theater, and the rest became the iconic Green Mill jazz bar, a favourite haunt of Al Capone and celebrities of the time.
Loren Miller and his eponymous dry goods store, opened in 1915, is often credited with establishing Uptown as a retail district. Loren Miller is credited with providing Uptown with its name, which is hard to prove, but in 1926, coaxed City Hall into recognizing "Uptown Square" next to Loren Miller. Goldblatt's bought the store later, and the building continues to exist today.
Starting in the 1910s, the trickle of African Americans fleeing the Jim Crow south for northern cities like Chicago becomes a flow. By the time the 1920 U.S. Census was collected, at least eighteen households of 'blacks" or "mulattos" were living on the 4600 block of Winthrop Avenue in Uptown.
With the rapid growth of coal mines and coal companies in an industiralizing US, coal workers, especially in Appalachia, began to organize. The United Mine Workers Association (UMWA) was founded in 1890 to push against rampant exploitation by coal companies, which used intimidation and murder to prevent unionization. The Battle of Blair Mountain in Virginia, 1921, is seen as a watershed moment in the long series of coalminers' strikes and protests that occurred throughout the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th century.
A new station was built at Wilson in a style radically different from Wright's Prairie style. The new station was in "Beaux Arts" style, built by A.W.Gerber, and inspired by the newly built (in 1913) Grand Central Terminal in NYC.
The Agudas Achim North Shore Congregation comprised Jewish migrants who moved to Uptown from the south and west sides of Chicago as they gained economic status. It struggled to maintain numbers since 1960s, and was redeveloped in 2012.
Uptown Theater, a “movie palace,” opens with a grand ball and street parade. It is among the many famous entertainment venues that were built in Uptown during the "roaring twenties." With an acre's worth of seating and resplendent interiors, the Uptown Theater catered to Chicago's elite.
Opened by Karzas brothers Andrew and William. The ballroom catered to the more well-to-do residents of Uptown.
The Great Depression marked an end to the inter-war economic boom in USA. Skyrocketing unemployment pushed thousands into the city in desperate search of work. As wealthier residents moved away, the residential apartments of Uptown were converted into smaller, ramshackle apartments for these working class in-migrants. The image shows men lining up in a soup kitchen in Chicago. Gang activity, led by those like Al Capone and John Dillinger, became rampant. The migration of several Black musicians from the south enriched the blues scene in Chicago. Source: Wikipedia
The Chicago Uptown Association successfully lobbies 90% of property owners - over 1500 - to sign an agreement restricting Black Americans to just one block - the 4600 block of Winthrop Avenue. This was the culmination of a three-year campaign, and $8000 in expenses. The agreement stipulated that “no part of their property could be sold, given, conveyed, or leased to any negro for a period of 20 years” (Uptown News, 1931). In typical Jim Crow era fashion, the Association's chairperson cited the reason to be that Black folks might be "happier in a section by themselves." Learn more at the Dis/Placements website: https://dis-placements.com/winthrop-description
Extension of Lake Shore Drive to Foster Avenue bypassing Uptown. Uptown was now better connected to the inner city, however the advent of the automobile—and with it the suburbs—spelled disaster for the neighborhood’s elites who sought to rival Chicago’s downtown commerce and property values.
Following the passage of President Franklin Roosevelt’s historic Federal Affordable Housing Act, the CHA is set up to manage all public housing in Chicago. The CHA would administer the public housing built as part of the federal government's efforts to improve the Depression-era economy through massive government spending on public projects. Over time, red tape and corruption in the CHA became a major point of protest for poor communities such as those in Uptown.
The first wave of Japanese Americans arrive in Chicago, following their release from incarceration camps on the West Coast as part of the War Relocation Authority's resettlement program for Nisei (2nd generation Japanese Americans). The WRA was established following the 1942 Executive Order 9066 that mandated the incarceration of people of Japanese descent.
Japanese American Service Committee (JASC) (formerly known as the Chicago Resettlers Committee) formed to “re-settle” those Japanese Americans coming to Chicago. Services included referrals to professional services (banks, attorneys, doctors, real estate), information about retailers, restaurant, religious services, and recreational activities.
The Illinois Act gave local governments the power to classify certain areas as "blighted" which "constitute a menace to the health, safety, morals and welfare of the residents of the State," and take measures to redevelop these areas. However, defining "blight" came to be a loaded political matter in the decades that followed. Poor communities accused governments of using legal frameworks like this Act to classify their living spaces as "slums," incentivizing landlords to unfairly evict them and make way for higher-value developments.
The Act was passed by President Truman to accommodate the "baby boom" and the increased need for housing in the postwar period. The Act enabled the dismantling of majority-Black poor neighborhoods by setting up higher-value housing for white families moving into the suburbs and away from diversifying cities.
The Relocation Act of 1952 made provisions for moving Native Americans from the reservations allotted to them under various treaties since the 19th century. The aim of the program, executed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), was supposedly to assimilate Indigenous Americans into “mainstream” society by eliminating reservations. What it actually became, however, was a "one-way ticket from rural to urban poverty" (Laukaitis 2015). Native American families now found themselves not only as poor as before, but without the community and cultural resources that reservations provided, resulting in deep alienation and trauma.
Chicago was one of the locations listed under the Act for Native Americans being moved from reservations in the Midwest. At this time, an estimated number of four thousand Indigenous Americans relocated to Chicago. By the 1960s, this number had expanded to between sixteen and twenty thousand.
The American Indian Center is established, then as "All-Tribes American Indian Center." ). In the context of the Relocation Act, it was started by a group of people, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous Americans, who wanted to start a cultural center that would help Indigenous American migrants adjust to urban life, and also foster an affirmative sense of identity among them. In its early stages in the 1950s, the AIC’s goals initially matched with those of the BIA, and it remained a cultural center, hosting cultural events such as powwows to foster a sense of belonging. In the 1960s and 1970s, influenced by a national climate of radical grassroots politics and similar movements in Uptown, the AIC too, began to define a politics of self-determination that took a stance against government policy. As a major force behind the landmark American Indian Chicago Conference of 1960 and the resultant Declaration of Indian Purpose, AIC’s goals began to reflect the slogan of Indigenous American mobilization all over the US: “Indians for Indians.” The AIC saw many community organizers such as Susan Powers, Leroy Wesaw and Joe White who stressed the need for pan-tribal solidarity.
The election of Richard J. Daley marked the height of what is called "machine politics" in ethnically diverse US cities: a system where mayors became party "bosses" who oversaw elaborate systems of patronage and favors given out to maintain power. While this system in the twentieth century replaced another political system wholly controlled by WASP (white Anglo-Saxon Protestant) barons and provided a place for ethnically diverse working classes, it nevertheless thrived on corruption, racism, maintianing interethnic tensions and segregation, and police violence. Over Daley's tenure, the "Democratic Machine" became the force that antiracist community organizations fought against. Richard J. Daley is most infamous for authorizing excessive police violence against protestors at the 1968 Democratic Convention. Learn more at: "Chicago Politics: The Machine, The Daleys, and What It Means for 2019" at the Chicago Detours blog. "Machine Politics" on the online Encyclopaedia of Chicago.
The influx of poor workers into the city was not a welcome sign for those who wanted to restore Uptown as the retail and entertainment hub it was beofre the Depression in the 1930s. The Uptown Chicago Commission, founded in 1955, continues to push for urban renewal even today, becmong a major opponent for poor and racialized communities who refused to be pushed out to make way for more lucrative developments.
World War II weakened European empires and gave renewed impetus to anti-colonial movements in Asia and Africa, resulting in the birth of many new nations. The Bandung Conference, led by the premiers of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, India, and China, and was attended by 29 countries. The conference soon led to the formation of the Non-Aligned Movement, an alliance of Asian and African nations that were not aligned with either "bloc" of the Cold War. The NAM continues to exist today.
The elite that built Chicago—the lumber and mining barons, the business class in general—was reliant on the resource-rich American hinterlands for their success. But the levels of resource extraction that urban growth demanded was unsustainable: it soon led to the environmental and economic collapse of entire regions like Appalachia. When the Depression hit, Appalachia, unsurprisingly, was worst affected. This period triggered a massive outmigration of the largely white rural farming communities in the area. And so, in the 1940s, thousands of poor Southern and Appalachian families, seeking jobs in the city, began to fill the once-prosperous apartments of Uptown, now converted to low-income housing. They settled in the blocks around the Wilson “el” station, and by the 1950s, around 38 percent of Uptown’s racially diverse population comprised white Appalachian migrants. Appalachians faced stereotyping and stigma in cities, and in Uptown, they were blamed for bringing about a decline of the neighborhood. The Center was a major hub for the growing Appalachian community in Chicago.
With the growing numbers of Japanese American families settling in Chicago, the Chicago Buddhist Church opened in Hyde Park in 1944. In 1957, the Church shifted to Uptown, likely responding to the growing concentrations of Japanese Americans in the neighborhood. The Temple became the center of Japanese American community in Chicago, and continues to be so. In 1964, it was renamed the Buddhist Temple of Chicago.
After World War II in 1945, the wary alliance between the Soviet Union and other Allied countries broke down, and a period of prolonged political tension between the US and the Soviet Union lasted the next 3 decades. These were framed, especially in US narratives, as the ideological battle against Communism. Characterized by the absence of direct military combat between the US and the Soviet Union, this period saw the use of espionage, trade embargos, technological progress and the two sides backing opposing factions in political conflicts in smaller countries. The extent of human displacement and loss of life caused by such coups and civil wars also shaped the influx of immigrants and refugees into the US. Proxy wars played out in Tibet (1950), Iraq (1958), Cuba (1960), Bolivia (1970), Uganda (1971), Argentina (1976), Pakistan (1977), Afghanistan (1978), Iran (1979), the Central African Republic (1979) and Turkey (1980), among others.
Chicago Southern Center catering to the Southern White migrants opens on the 4600 Block of Kenmore Ave. The Center had links to the Council of the Southern Mountains - a missionary organization based in Berea, Kentucky, that grew out of the Southern Mountain Workers' Conference. The Center became a major hub for the growing Appalachian population in Uptown.
The Model Cities program, launched by then president Lyndon Johnson, aimed to counteract the ill-effects of top-down city planning. Such planning often excluded the large majority of poorer urban populations and catered to the interests of local elites, who prioritized beautification, crime-control and commercialization over providing basic services and welfare. Rather than addressing systemic causes of poverty, such efforts simply pinned the blame and responsibility on the poor themselves. To change this, the Model Cities program promised to re-orient urban planning to make it more inclusive and responsive to the needs of the people who inhabited cities. As these headlines show, the Model Cities plan was criticized both by grassroots community groups and by political opponents of welfare for putting a powerful, and often corrupt, bureaucracy in charge of welfare. In the 1960s, Uptown was chosen as one of the “blighted” areas of Chicago where the Model Cities program would be implemented.
In 1966, JOIN opened its first office on Withrop and Ainslie. The Jobs or Income Now Community Union in Uptown was one of the earliest interracial movements of poor people to address the profound inequality that sustained American capitalism. JOIN was started and managed by radicalized college students from an organization called the Students for a Democratic Society, whose aim it was to build a nation-wide movement by working class people, united across the powerful barriers of racism that kept them apart. However, the real drivers behind the short-lived, but profoundly impactful life of JOIN were a set of working class mothers who relied on welfare, including Peggy Terry, Dovie Thurman, Dovie Coleman, Mary Hockenberry, and Betty Jo Herrell.
JOIN wins the first fair tenant-landlord contract in Chicago after a rent strike. Landlords of the deteriorating buildings occupied by poor migrants in Uptown had little reason to maintain the buildings, compounded by the city's negligence of housing conditions in Uptown, and these "slumlords" often engaged in dangerous malpractices like arson for profit. One of JOIN's main strategies was to help tenants to form unions and withhold rent until landlords agreed to carry out maintenance, keep rents affordable and to bargain for better lease contracts. This model strategy was later adopted by another organization, the Intercommunal Survival Committee, to set up "Tenant Survival Unions" all over Uptown.
JOIN's work, especially its strong stance against police brutality, resulted in backlashes. In 1966, the JOIN office was raided, material confiscated, and members arrested. Police claimed they found narcotics and "anti-government" lierature in the office, and members claimed they had been planted in revenge. Just two weeks before the raid, JOIN and other organizations had together organized a march to the Summerdale police station to protest brutality and demand the firing of a particularly violent officer. At this point, JOIN was facing both the Daley Machine's violence, and also surveillance by the FBI. Learn more: Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels, and Black Power (2011) by Amy Sonnie and James Tracy.
The Firing Line was the newlsetter of JOIN, edited by Peggy Terry. FL encouraged poor Uptowners to develop their own narratives about their experiences, and spread awareness about the radical possibilities of poor people's power to bring about change. It took seriously the exhortation by Black Power leaders that white activists must organize within white communities for antiracist change to occur. FL content shows how Appalachian activists were beginning to imagine their identity based on allegiance with poor Black people against an anti-poor system.
The Illinois chapter of the BPP, among over forty chapters in the US at the time, gained particular attention for its exceptional work under Fred Hampton and Bobby Rush. Like other branches of the BPP, they organized free breakfast programs and setup clinics for free healthcare in Black communities. Thanks to these efforts and Hampton's capactiy to compellingly speak to the masses, the Illinois chapter saw a huge rise in membership. The increase in organized movements by poor white people in Uptown grabbed Hampton's attention, and he began considering political coalitions with the poor people of Uptown.
The Uptown Goodfellows were a local gang of white Appalachian youth that began to work activley with JOIN. They began to take on the roles of grassroots activists, protesting police brutality and spreading antiracist awareness to defuse interracial gang tensions. Soon, they received direct support from the Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party, and began to consciously adopt the BPP model of running free breakfast programs and clinics. The image on the left shows a report on ther health clinic, where their aims closely mirror that of the BPP: as a mark of protest against a public health system that devalued poor people's lives and dignity, they would offer free services through a clinic that the community had control over.
In the meantime, a similar movement was occurring among Puerto Rican youth in Lincoln Park through the Young Lords Organization. When Jose "Cha Cha" Jimenez took leadership of the YLO, he was inspired by the organizing model of the BPP and their idea of community self-defense. The Puerto Rican community in Chicago was frequently pushed out from their neighborhoods as urban renewal drove up land value and led to increased police brutality. JImenez himself had an unstable childhood, changing schools frequently as his family moved. Whereas the Young Lords was formerly a gang, under Jimenez, the Young Lords Organization became actively involved in grassroots politics, seeking to bring together the community to refuse displacement. The YLO became well-known for their organizing work around the police shooting of a member, Manuel Ramos, who was unarmed. Apart from conducting marches, the YLO took over the Armitage Avenue United Methodist Church in an act of protest, after which it was renamed People's Church by its congregation.
Chicago Black Panther field secretary Bobby Lee, with the support of Chuck Geary, begins to convince the poor whites of Uptown about an alliance. Months later, the Rainbow Coalition is formed by the Black Panther Party, the Young Patriots and the Young Lords.
The 1968 Annual Convention of the Democratic Party marked a milestone in the turbulent 60s in the US. It took place shortly after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., after which riots broke out in several US cities. Protests against the ongoing American involvement in the Vietnam War was at its height, especially given the disastrous losses that US troops suffered in the previous year. Massive groups of protestors planned to protest around the Convention. Mayor Daley, angered at losing the opportunity to showcase Chicago under his mayoralty, deployed extraordinaly heavy policy and security forces in the area. Violence broke out, and images of police forces brutally beating protestors was broadcast nationwide. After the convention, eight leaders involved in the protests (later seven as Black Panther leader Bobby Seale was dropped from the trial) were arrested for inciting riots. They underwent a momentous and publicized trial that became infamous for the blatant violation of the rights of those on trial, and for many, was exemplary of the spirit of popular protest and government repression that characterized the era. The defendants became nationally known as the "Chicago 7," and included Rennie Davis, an SDS member who was part of JOIN in Uptown.
Architect Rodney Wright and planner Sydney Wright get funding to start the Uptown Design Center. With Chuck Geary and Uptown Area People's Planning Coalition (UAPPC), they develop the plan for the Hank Williams Village through extensive consultations with Uptown's poor residents, which also involved teaching them the basics of planning, thereby creating a participative model of architectural planning. The plan was eventually rejected by housing authorities because developers would not back it.
Rising Up Angry as an organization was formed by some of the student organizers who looked to continue organizing work after the decline of JOIN. Mike James, Diane Fager, Bob Lawson and others had learned from JOIN that working class Chicagoans had to be at the heart of any organizing. They were joined by Steve Tappis, Mary Driscoll, Paul Wozniak, and others from Chicago's working class, and launched a newsletter to build a presence in northside Chicago. They aimed at building rapport with white youth gangs, whom they saw as people who could lead the movement for antiracist working-class justice. The newsletter connected issues of local, national, and international injustice. For seven years, Rising Up Angry built up a massive support base by embracing working-class youth culture and conducting anti-war rallies, outlasting many organizations of the time. Once the Vietnam War ended, the members of Rising Up Angry decided to dissolve the organization. Source: Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels, and Black Power by Amy Sonnie and James Tracy.
Like JOIN, the ISC was a group of white organizers inspired by the Black Panther Party’s call for white people to organize their own poor so they can take part in a unified, antiracist class struggle. Its name encompassed its political stance: poor people needed means of “survival pending revolution,” and this survival can only happen through intercommunal solidarity. Moving to Uptown in 1971, the ISC slowly began to build a base by distributing the Black Panther Party’s newsletters and setting up survival programs, also taking part in existing community efforts like the Hank Williams Village and Rainbow Coalition-led efforts. By 1973, as other community organizations went into decline because of state repression, the ISC, along with organizations like Rising Up Angry and Voice of the People, became the new vanguard of poor people’s politics.
Fred Hampton and fellow Panther Mark Clark are assassinated in Hampton's home 2337 W. Montrose Avenue. This state-backed killing, with no due process, was never clearly ruled as illegal, despite a legal battle over a decade long, and overwhelming evidence that the police team had stormed the apartment and shot fatally at the sleeping Fred Hampton without provocation. Amidst protests, the police involved were praised for their work, and the other Panthers charged for the violence. In 1989, a federal court ruling in favor of a civil rights suit, filed on behalf of the Panthers who were victims of the shooting, allowed monetary compensation to the mothers of Hampton and Clark. Charges against the policemen involved, and State Attorney at the time, Edward Hanrahan (widely touted as Mayor Daley’s successor), were dropped as part of this settlement. Fred Hampton’s death is now widely decried as a case of institutional murder with impunity.
Ongoing and increasing American involvement in the Vietnam War under president Richard Nixon, along with his right-leaning policies, fueled protests in the 1970s. Civil rights and Black Power movements in the country saw common cause with Vietnamese commoners whose lives were being decimated by the ongoing war. The widely mediatized nature of the Vietnam War made it a powerful umbrella cause for different groups to unite and protest against the aggressions of the American state.
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