During the Great Migration from 1940 to 1960, thousands of African Americans migrated from the South to Chicago, increasing the city's black population from 270,000 to over 800,000. This document uses census tract data from 1940 to 2000 to illustrate the expansion of Chicago's African American population across the city over time as they faced segregation enforced by the Chicago Housing Authority.

1. Chicago’s Wall: Race, Segregation
and the Chicago Housing Authority
David Greetham
Digital I.S.

2. Great Migration
• From 1940 to 1960, thousands of African
Americans migrated from the South to Chicago
• In the 1950s, more than 2,000 African Americans
arrived in Chicago every week
• Chicago’s African American population increased
from 270,000 in 1940 to over 800,000 in 1960
• By the mid 1960s, African Americans comprised
30 percent of the city’s population

3. The following data illustrates the
expansion of the African American
population by census tract percentage
from 1940 to 2000

4. 1940

5. 1960

6. 1970

7. 1980

8. 1990

9. 2000

10. References
• Census tract data: socialexplorer.com
• Hirsch, Arnold R. Making the Second Ghetto:
Race and Housing in Chicago, 1940-1960.New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
• Lemann, Nicholas. The Promised Land: The
Great Black Migration and How it Changed
America. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991.