1950s-1980s

-Chicago's ghettos in the 1960s were notorious for their shootings, robberies, rapes, fires, joblessness, single-parent families, dreadful schools and high dropout rates, rampant alcoholism and heroin addiction, abandoned buildings and vacant lots.

-1950s: In the course of little more than a decade, at least 9,000 families are displaced as the Chicago area’s major expressways are built.

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1950's-1980's

By 1960 Chicago's black population reached over 800,000, almost a quarter of the total-up from 14 percent just 10 years earlier. In black neighborhoods schools were overcrowded, with many on double shifts. Class sizes were smaller in white schools than in black ones, even though more new buildings had been erected for black students.  The Catholic school enrollments grew by nearly 30 percent in the city and nearly tripled in the suburbs. Most of these students were white students whose parents did not want their children in schools with the growing population of African Americans and other races. Under the leadership of George Cardinal Mundelein and Samuel Cardinal Stritch, parishes scrambled to build schools to meet the demand, particularly for high schools. By the early fifties, nearly 200,000 students attended Catholic schools, about 70 percent of them in the city, most of the students being white. The loss of white students from the Chicago Public Schools can be explained partially by “white flight” from the city to suburban communities; but it also reflected a shift to private and parochial school education for many whites. In 1963 school superintendent Benjamin Willis rejected calls for desegregation, and the portable classrooms added to black schools were derisively labeled “Willis Wagons.” In 1963 massive demonstrations were staged by students and parents to protest Willis's policies. Public outcries intensified in the wake of commissioned reports recommending dramatic steps to redress educational inequality. Threats by the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare to withhold federal funds until a desegregation plan was developed were thwarted by Mayor Richard J. Daley's intervention. Then Willis's term ended in 1966, James Redmond, his successor, attempted to develop integration plans that would send black students to predominantly white schools. Hostile demonstrations greeted such efforts on the city's Northwest and Southwest Sides. Redmond and other school leaders found themselves hampered by board members and local politicians reluctant to anger whites opposed to integration.  Showing serious strains on the racial situation in Chicago during the height of the Civil rights movement.

1950-1980

• Chicago was a popular destination for blacks moving from the South to the North in the early 20th century
• from 1890-1910 Chicago's African American population 15,000-40,000 due to the Great Migration
• Great Migration was was between 1915-1970 six million African Americans left their homes in the South and moved to the North, specifically Chicago
• African American Chicago residents mostly moved to the South side neighborhood, due to discriminatory real estate practices and threats of violence
• neighborhoods were very segregated  
• South Side became known as the "Black Belt"

http://www.bcps.org/offices/lis/models/slamdunks/raisin/Housing_Segregation_1950s_Chicago.pdf

1900s

-creation of International Harvester from these companies in 1902 capped Chicago's leading position in this industry.

1950s
-economy experienced competition with Detroit
- building of the interstate highway system in the 1950s and 1960s helped the area's economy initially, because the first expressways paralleled existing forms of transportation and reinforced older metropolitan areas. 
-Although the area's industrial economy remained strong, the city's did not. Companies closed aging factories in the city and shifted work to new suburban plants
-As jobs became more plentiful outside the city, people migrating to the Chicago area often settled in the suburbs, bypassing the city entirely. This was only true, however, if the migrants were white; because of discrimination, African Americans were restricted to the city.

1900-1920

*Chicago continued to expand, reaching a population of 2.2 million (not including suburbs) by 1910.

*The railway was still being expanded. In 1900, there was 34.8 miles of railway and by 1914, there was 70.3 miles. Chicago's "L" (the Loop) was the third longest metropolitan railway in the world.
*Chicago's modern street numbering system was established in 1909.
* In 1919, the Chicago Race Riots broke out. 38 people died. Occurred because an African American teenagers went to a white beach (beaches were segregated) and wouldn't leave, so the white beach-goers stoned him until he drowned. The police refused to arrest the men who stoned him.

1900-1920

Lincoln Park Expands
built in 1903
one of the major landmarks in Chicago (cemetery)
people took pride in being buried here
Chicago Schools
region first schools were built in the 1830s
they focused on math, writing, and language but also on citizenship and good behavior
addressed problems of social and economic inequality
tried to Americanize immigrant students

http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/1124.html