Black residents were leaving Chicago by the time Eugene Sawyer became the city's mayor in 1987.
The Englewood neighborhood was a center of Black life in Chicago for decades, and it still is. It was a center of political gravity, and it was where Sawyer began his political career.
There were signs of change. The fortunes of the neighborhood changed as soon as the Black people made it their own. Disinvestment caused houses to fall into disrepair. The massive Sears store left the neighborhood in 1976.
The trickle is a flood. In 1960, the area boasted nearly 100,000 people, but now it is home to about 22,000. It has left a lot of old buildings, schools and storefronts, like a tide going out. Its remaining residents face a level of street violence that is seemingly intractable.
On a recent November afternoon, Roderick Sawyer, who narrowly won his father's old City Council seat in 2011, walked past block after block of vacant lots, pointing out the empty homes and apartment buildings whose gutted frames were overgrown by weeds, exposing themselves to Chicago's notorious weather.
Sawyer cried when he toured the neighborhood after his election. I had tears in my eyes when I saw that there was nothing being paid attention to in a lot of areas.
There are many reasons for the decline of Englewood from a boomtown to a ghost town. It is a story about what happens when people decide to give up and leave a neighborhood, and how that changes the city around it.
Neighborhoods lost historically Black communities.
Black residents at the Census.
During the Great Migration of the 20th century, Chicago was the hub for many of the 6 million African American people who fled the Jim Crow South. The Chicago Defender, the nation's leading Black newspaper, urged Black Southerners to flee North in 1916. By 1980, Chi-town had become a place where Black businesses, culture and entertainment thrived. Some residents formed businesses that became fixture of Black American life. The 1983 victory of Mayor Harold Washington seemed to be the turning point for Black political power.
Black political power moved.
The most extreme example of demographic upheaval in a city is Chicago, and neighborhoods like Englewood. The 2020 census shows Black Americans moving out of their homes in the Northern and Western parts of the country and moving to smaller cities, the suburbs, and the South. POLITICO found that nine of the 10 cities with the largest numbers of African Americans saw significant declines in their Black populations over the past 20 years.
Nine of 10 cities with the most Black residents had decreases since 2000.
Chicago's outflow has been dramatic. In 1980, 40 percent of the city's total population was Black, making it one of the most powerful concentrations of Black business and political power in the country. The number has dropped to 29 percent since then. Detroit has seen a bigger drop in Black residents than any other city.
Half of the Black population disappeared in some parts of Chicago.
Black residents have a percent change.
The impact on Chicago has been stark, not only in the feeling and identities of neighborhoods like Englewood, but in the power politics of the nation's third-largest city. Latino residents are replacing Black residents, forcing a realignment in Chicago's political scene, and a return of the bare-knuckle tribal fights that made Chicago's City Hall legendary.
The political agenda of the father was to build a multiracial coalition among the city's low-income residents and white progressives. Black and brown communities are competing for control of the city government.
The council's Black Caucus is trying to keep 16 of the 18 majority Black seats it now holds, plus one seat in a mostly Black ward, as the city re-draws the maps of its 50 City Council wards. The Latino council members want more representation because of their growing population. The council is defined by the argument between the two groups.
Black-majority seats would be struck by the proposed map.
Every 10 years, these wards are remapped. The Chicago City Council Latino Caucus has a proposal.
The Black and Latino caucuses are preparing for a referendum that would allow voters to make the final call on the issue before the June primary, after the City Council failed to come to a compromise last week.
The council will hold public hearings because of the delay in drawing boundary lines. She told POLITICO that they need to find a way to meet in the middle despite the difficulties of the process.
The fight is about keeping power, but it is also about cultural concerns. Many families were nurtured in Chicago's Black-majority neighborhoods, but also some towering figures of American history, such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Ida B. Wells and Jesse Jackson.
Sawyer is part of the Black Caucus that is trying to keep as many Black-majority seats as possible. He said he didn't want to lose his identity as a Black community.
Whites and Latinos are welcome to come and live in the neighborhood. Maybe they will learn something about Black people and the Black experience if they add to that cultural diversity.
The push and pull for power on the City Council, as well as the Black exodus, hold important insights for the rest of the country. When African Americans leaveChocolate Cities, what happens to Black political power? Is it possible to create multiracial coalitions? How do you get people to stay?
One of the people who left could have been Asiaha.
She is the executive director of the Resident Association of Greater Englewood, a neighborhood group that mobilizes Black residents and Black-owned businesses interested in recapturing the neighborhood's legacy.
She was almost part of the exodus. She recounted her story as she sipped tea on the sun-drenched patio of a Starbucks across the parking lot from a Whole Foods that looked nothing like the rest of Englewood, but instead was a symbol of another broken promise.
Emanuel promoted the luxury grocery store as a source of jobs and fresh food, opening doors to a new future for the community. Five years after the store opened, a lot of new development has yet to start.
Whole Foods promised to revive the commercial strip that was once home to Butler's mother. Her parents also met here. In 2002 she purchased a home not far from this spot. She decided to send her daughter to a public school in another Chicago community because she was dismayed by the test scores in her neighborhood.
Life got worse on the block. Every day there was gunfire. A bullet hit the house. Someone tried to steal from the family. By 2008, he was ready to leave.
The areas with the most homicides are being moved by black residents.
The number of homicides and the Black population change.
She called it an exit plan. Villa Rica, Ga., was an Atlanta-area community where Black life seemed more prosperous. Many of her friends and family had already moved to Georgia, Texas or Virginia, looking for a better quality of life: affordable and larger homes, warmer weather and better-performing schools.
What you knew and what you could relate to no longer exist. There were six more homes on that block when we bought our house. They are all gone. It is almost like a vanishing act.
The POLITICO analysis shows that places like Englewood that have seen the highest number of homicides in the past two decades have also seen the largest outflow of Black residents. The neighborhoods that grew their Black populations had the lowest number of killings.
The losses were caused by a number of destabilizing events, including the loss of manufacturing jobs, the demolition of public housing, and the closing of public schools.
The city of Chicago fell while the suburbs picked up.
Black residents at the Census.
The small waves of Black residents leaving public housing was turned into a big wave by the Chicago Housing Authority. The Cabrini-Green and Robert Taylor homes were rife with gang activity and were among the most overcrowded high rises in the city. Thousands of people were left homeless by the demolition of Chicago's housing projects. Many residents ended up in unfamiliar neighborhoods without social services to help them get a leg up in the middle class. There was tension between new and old residents.
"You dumped people in communities simply because they're Black," said Delmarie Cobb, a long-time Illinois political consultant who worked for Hillary Clinton.
You wouldn't have dumped people in white communities.
With people leaving, the city started closing public schools, making it harder for Black residents to find new places to live. The Chicago Board of Education and Emanuel closed 50 schools in a single year.
A moment of clarity persuaded him to stay. She abandoned the family exit plan after seeing children playing in the dirt of a vacant lot outside her window. She understands that not everyone is willing to sacrifice.
They want to stick it out. At the end of the day, we all want a community that is safe, and that we can raise our children in. It is difficult to do that on the South and West sides.
The neighborhood in West Englewood is in transition. The neighborhood is more than just a story of disappearance. The Latino population has grown by more than 30 percent since 2010 and the Black population has shrunk by 33 percent. In 2010 it was 774, but in 2020 it was 5,832. Latino numbers are growing and now make up nearly a fifth of the neighborhood.
I remember 10 years ago, I could count on one hand the number of Latino families in the ward. I can count two hands on each block. Raymond Lopez, who represents the part of the neighborhood on Chicago's City Council, said it was a phenomenal shift.
The Latino community has been injected with a sense of vitality by the migration and has built thriving commercial strips elsewhere in the city.
The race line is moving further East as Latinos buy cheap houses and land. Frank Calabrese, who is advising the Latino Caucus, said that the same thing is happening in West Humboldt Park and Austin.
Rival ward maps have been pitched, each cementing Black or Latino power for the next decade.
The Latino council members filed a map with the city clerk's office last week that shows the Latino population is up 5 percent and the Black population is down 10 percent. The Black Caucus has worked with the Rules Committee to create a map that shows the majority of the wards are black.
The Black and Latino caucuses agree that it is time to create an Asian-focused ward because the city's Asian population has increased to nearly 7 percent in the past 10 years. The most concentrated area of Asian residents is now split between two wards.
Calabrese believes that the Black Caucus map is out of touch with Chicago's current population trends. He said that the Latino Caucus map reflected the reality of Chicago demographic today.
The leader of the Black Caucus on the City Council is upset with his Latino colleagues, who he sees as trying to squeeze out Black people from the council. The Voting Rights Act is illegal, he said. He says that the Latino Caucus map is bad for the city because it reduces the power of the Black population.
The City Council's fight to re-draw boundaries has put a spotlight on Lightfoot, the city's third Black mayor, who won in a 2019 landslide on a reform-minded platform. She left town for Washington, D.C. on the day the council was supposed to vote on a map, but didn't jump into the fight between Black and Latino lawmakers.
The first draft of the map supported by the Black Caucus was protected by an incumbent white alderman who was indicted by a federal grand jury.
The mayor, a former prosecutor, said that the most important thing for him was not having districts or wards where there was no competition. Nobody should be guaranteed a seat for the rest of their lives.
She said that if we don't start thinking about engaging with our residents, we're not going to get beyond being the most segregating city in the country.
The ward map battle is playing out at the state and congressional levels. Boundary battles are a part of politics in Illinois and across the country. The Latino population in Illinois rose even as the state lost population overall and a congressional seat. The Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund is keeping a close watch on the ward map fight in Chicago, as well as the state lawmakers who have filed a lawsuit against the state saying the map is discrimination.
There will be another census in a decade. The question for many voters in a city facing demographic change is whether Black and Latino leaders can form meaningful coalitions that bring investment, better schools and less violence to their communities.
We have to figure out a way to get along in a city that is two-thirds people of color. My hope is that people will see that there is more to be gained by seeing the common ground and compromise.
The mapping fight in Chicago is more than just a turf battle. It is about who has control of the city.
The council has the power to oversee an enormous amount of money and influence, even though Chicago boasted a strong mayor system for decades. The city of Chicago used to have 50 mini-mayors, who were appointed by the mayor.
The congressman said that people in Chicago feel that an alderman is more important than a state representative.
He said it was more important than a member of Congress.
The council is a place that can help protect against discrimination and racism and bring about more equitable investments into neighborhoods, said a former Chicago alderman and mayoral candidate.
A loss of that is seen as a loss in power, influence and protection.
There is irony in Chicago's transformation. The Great Migration was the result of the city being the engine that drove it. Black political ascendancy here was short-lived.
The Council Wars were a racially charged blockade that stymied Harold Washington's authority after he charged into City Hall. In 1986, a federal court ordered the redrawn of seven wards in order to acknowledge the Black and Latino populations' voting power, which led to the election of a new Southwest Side alderman.
The first Black mayor of the City of Chicago was elected out of nowhere, according to Bobby Rush, who co-founded the Illinois chapter of the Black.
He said that it became a threat to the white supremacy in the community and a threat to the segregation in Chicago.
Black Chicagoans are still frustrated that their political power wasn't matched by the economic clout needed to truly remake the parts of the city they cared about. Even as white neighborhoods and racially diverse middle-class neighborhoods flourished, the city's low-income Black neighborhoods remained stagnant.
The Rev. Ira Acree has seen the rise and fall of Chicago's Black population firsthand.
After a service at Greater St. John Bible Church in Chicago, Acree said that America will soon be a color-majority nation.
Blacks will be a significant minority in Chicago. Some of the Black elected officials are going to lose their seats, that will hurt us with representation. It will be difficult to have an economic engine that runs in our community.
One of the challenges for Chicago is managing demographic change, but there are other challenges for people with a different goal.
It is possible to attract more Black middle-class and working-class people back to the city, preserving an important legacy, and keeping its foundation as a center of Black according to other Black political leaders.
The out migration is slowing. Lightfoot sees possibility when others see displacement and population loss. The mayor says that many African Americans are leaving Chicago to go to Indiana.
She said that there was an opportunity to think of a strategy to bring people back.
The $750 million in public and private funds will be invested into 10 Chicago communities in the south and west of the city. The plan includes turning rundown buildings into green spaces, grocery stores, and affordable housing. The firehouse in Englewood will be turned into a business hub. A bank in Austin will be turned into a blues museum.
A few weeks ago, the mayor unveiled $126 million for development projects in the West Side's Humboldt Park neighborhood and South Shore, a predominantly Black, middle-class neighborhood. The birthplace of Barack Obama. The projects include mixed-income housing.
The projects are projected to create 2,200 permanent or temporary jobs, which is a shift in the population trend. She said that creating jobs is the biggest way to stop out-migration of African Americans from the city. Working-class Blacks are leaving for jobs that are easy to find.
The City Council approved a guaranteed basic income pilot program that will provide monthly payments of $500 to 5,000 low-income residents for one year, making it the largest such project in the country.
The city and the Obamas hope that the Obama Presidential Center will bring more people to the area.
Chicago may be a test case for their efforts to win back Black residents.
American cities have yet to figure out how to reverse decades of neglect without evicting residents, according to a senior fellow at the Brookings Metro. He said that urban development is geared toward attracting socially mobile professionals who are white. If the schools do get better, if crime does fall, then housing by default will become more expensive in the absence of dedicated policy.
In Chicago, that means the people who gave the city its culture could be lost without action from those in power. In other Black neighborhoods, this isn't a secret.
The city is run by a machine. She said that the city's history of redlining to keep Black people out of middle-class neighborhoods will make it hard to turn things around. Chicago's Black population will decline if the city fails again.
A lot of people in these communities are hurting, but you can see a few success stories. If we don't redesign it, people will leave the city. That is the bad part about it.
