In 1948, the Supreme Court declared restrictive covenants unconstitutional. Tuberculosis and other diseases spread the infant mortality and overall death rates were higher in the Black Belt than in the rest of Chicago.Īfter the war there was an outward migration from the Black Belt into surrounding neighborhoods. This is illustrated in A Raisin in the Sun when Travis Younger and his friends kill a rat as “big as a cat.” Rats reportedly attacked sleeping children, sometimes maiming and even killing them. These conditions of ramshackle and dangerous housing, neglect and indifference from city officials and poor sanitation resulted in infestation by rats. Despite building codes, landlords were rarely penalized for owning slum housing and the few landlords who were fined found it was far more profitable to pay the usually small fine than to maintain their buildings. Approximately 751 fires occurred in one year in the Black Belt, many of them fatal. The partitions used to divide the apartments were flammable as well, adding to the hazardous conditions. Residents used kerosene lamps instead, and their improvised stoves often overheated and caused fires. Buildings sometimes lacked such basic amenities as proper heating. These apartments often had no bathrooms, with all the occupants of a floor having to share a single hall unit. Because there were so many people living in this one area, demand far exceeded supply, and landlords would divide apartments into tiny units called “kitchenettes” and charge exorbitant rents. Such overcrowding, while difficult in itself, also contributed to generally poor housing conditions for black families. When overcrowding continued into the post-war years as more blacks moved north to Chicago, many families would often live in one apartment. Such covenants, by restricting African Americans to the Black Belt, increased overcrowding within this area during the war. In an effort to keep the newly arriving African Americans out of their neighborhoods, whites within a residential block formed “restrictive covenants,” legally binding contracts that specified a house’s owner could not rent or sell to black people. Approximately 60,000 blacks had moved from the South to Chicago during 1940-44 in search of jobs. African Americans were primarily limited to an area of Chicago known as the “Black Belt,” which was located between 12th and 79th streets and Wentworth and Cottage Grove avenues. The housing market in Chicago was tight even before the end of World War II when veterans returned in need of housing. Although less well known than The Great Migration of 1910-1930, when large numbers of African Americans first moved to Chicago from the South, the period of 1940-1960 actually saw more African Americans arrive in the city, owing to such factors as the availability of industrial jobs during World War II and the collapse of the Southern share-cropping system. The play is set sometime between 19, and illustrates many of the conflicts that surrounded the questions of race and housing during this period in Chicago. It draws upon a complicated and difficult part of Chicago’s history. Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun chronicles the efforts of an African American family to move out of the ghetto to a better neighborhood.
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