The Chicago Plan, Part 1

Episode 2: The Chicago Plan, Part 1

Air Date: April 25, 2024

Chris Jenkins Image
Bruce Orenstein
Director

Narrated By: Linda Kimbrough | Animation Narrated By: Rufus Williams
Animation By: Nate Ziller

As Social Darwinist thinking spread in the early-20th century, a leading Chicago Improvement Association declared that introducing Blacks into a white community devalued property. Black families who dared to move into white communities faced ostracism, vandalism, and house bombings.

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Dominic Pacyga

Adam Green

Adrienne Brown

Charles Branham

Ethan Michaeli

Mary Pattillo

Don Hayner

Davarian Baldwin

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“Many of the Black migrants who come to Chicago in the early [20th Century] believe that by leaving a Jim Crow society, they might find hope in the so-called  liberal North. But they get here and are met with a big surprise.”

– Davarian Baldwin,
Historian, Trinity College