Source: Politics<\/p>\n
ENGLEWOOD, CHICAGO \u2014<\/span> By the time Eugene Sawyer became Chicago\u2019s mayor in 1987 following the sudden death of the first African American to hold the office, Black residents were already leaving.<\/p>\n For decades, long before Sawyer\u2019s ascension, the Englewood neighborhood had been a center of Black life in Chicago, boasting one of the city\u2019s busiest commercial districts and a growing middle class. And it was a true power base, a center of political gravity: Sawyer launched his political career near here, in the 6th Ward of Chicago\u2019s City Council.<\/p>\n But there were signs of change, even then. It seemed that just as soon as Black people made the neighborhood their own, its fortunes turned. Houses started falling into disrepair, thanks to disinvestment. Stores closed up shop \u2014 including the massive Sears store that left the neighborhood<\/a> in 1976.<\/p>\n Now that trickle is a flood. Englewood, one of Chicago\u2019s 77 community areas, boasted nearly 100,000 people in 1960 but is now home to about 22,000. Like a tide going out, it has left relics of decades of decline: more abandoned buildings, shuttered schools and boarded-up storefronts. Its remaining residents face a seemingly intractable level of street violence.<\/p>\n On a recent November afternoon, Roderick Sawyer, who narrowly won his father\u2019s 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\u2019s notorious weather.<\/p>\n When he toured the neighborhood after his election, Sawyer said, \u201cI\u2019m not going to lie, I cried a little bit. I had tears in my eyes, because I saw there was nothing being paid attention in a lot of areas of Englewood.\u201d<\/p>\n Englewood\u2019s descent from a boomtown to a ghost town is a story with many causes, from government neglect to the loss of manufacturing jobs. But it\u2019s also a story about what happens to a neighborhood when people decide to give up and leave \u2014 and how that reshapes the city around it.<\/p>\n For much of the 20th century, Chicago was the mecca for many of the 6 million African American people fleeing the Jim Crow South during the Great Migration. Starting in 1916, the Chicago Defender, then the nation\u2019s leading Black newspaper, urged Black Southerners to flee North. By 1980, the nearly 1.2 million Black people living in \u201cChi-town\u201d had reshaped it into a place where Black businesses, culture and entertainment thrived. Some residents became millionaires, forming companies like Ebony\/Jet and Johnson Products, businesses that became fixtures of Black American life. Mayor Harold Washington\u2019s 1983 victory, breaking through Chicago\u2019s Irish power structure, seemed like the turning point for Black political power.<\/p>\n Instead, Black political power moved.<\/p>\n Chicago \u2014 and neighborhoods like Englewood \u2014 offer perhaps the most extreme example of a demographic upheaval reshaping power in cities across the country. The 2020 census shows Black Americans moving, in huge numbers, out of their longtime homes in Northern and Western cities, and resettling in smaller cities, the suburbs and \u2014 in a twist on the Great Migration of the 20th century \u2014 the South. Nine of 10 of the cities with the largest numbers of African Americans saw significant declines in their Black populations over the past 20 years, according to census data compiled by POLITICO.<\/p>\n In sheer numbers, Chicago\u2019s outflow has been particularly dramatic. In 1980, about 40 percent of the city\u2019s total population was Black \u2014 one of the country\u2019s most formidable concentrations of Black business and political power. Since then, that number has dropped to just under 29 percent. Only Detroit, a city with its share of troubles, has seen a bigger drop in Black residents.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s third-largest city. Latino residents are beginning to replace Black residents, forcing a realignment in Chicago\u2019s political scene \u2014 and a return of the bare-knuckle tribal fights that made Chicago\u2019s City Hall legendary.<\/p>\n Back in 1987, Roderick Sawyer\u2019s father inherited a political agenda from Washington that included ambitions to build a multiracial coalition among the city\u2019s low-income residents and white progressives \u2014 one that would help advance marginalized communities. Today, that dream feels distant, as Black and brown communities battle each other for a greater stake in city government.<\/p>\n The locus of conflict, right now, is redistricting: As the city redraws the maps of its 50 City Council wards, dictated by population, the council\u2019s Black Caucus is trying to preserve 16 of the 18 majority Black seats it now holds, plus one seat in a mostly Black ward. The Latino council members are pushing for greater representation (one more seat) given their growing population. Rather than building a bold new coalition of united Black and brown leaders, the council is defined by the argument between them.<\/p>\n After Chicago\u2019s City Council failed to come to a compromise last week, the Black and Latino caucuses are gearing up for what could be a bitter and expensive referendum that would allow voters to make the final call, possibly prolonging the fight into May, before the June primary.<\/p>\n The delay in drawing boundary lines means the council will hold public hearings, which is what Mayor Lori Lightfoot has been calling for throughout the process. In spite of the \u201cvagaries of the redistricting process, we\u2019ve got to find a way to meet in the middle,\u201d she told POLITICO.<\/p>\n The fight is ultimately about holding on to power, but part of the conflict is rooted in cultural worries as well. Chicago\u2019s Black-majority neighborhoods nurtured not only countless families, but also towering figures of American history: Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Bessie Smith, Ida B. Wells, Jesse Jackson and Barack and Michelle Obama.<\/p>\n Sawyer is one of the members of the council\u2019s Black Caucus trying to keep as many Black-majority seats as possible, and sees himself partly as a curator of this legacy. \u201cI don\u2019t want to lose this identity as being a Black community,\u201d he said as he walked through Englewood.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s not to say we don\u2019t want whites and Latinos coming and living in the neighborhood,\u201d he continued. \u201cThey\u2019re more than welcome to add to that cultural diversity \u2014 and maybe then they\u2019ll learn something about Black people and the Black experience.\u201d<\/p>\n Chicago\u2019s Black exodus, and the messy push and pull for power on the City Council, hold some important insights for the rest of the country as we navigate massive demographic shifts. What happens to Black political power when African Americans leave one-time \u201cChocolate Cities\u201d en masse? Is it possible to create multiracial coalitions? How do you get people to stay \u2014 or to come back?<\/p>\n Asiaha Butler could have<\/span> been one of the ones who left.<\/p>\n Today, she\u2019s executive director of the Resident Association of Greater Englewood \u2014 a neighborhood group that mobilizes Black residents and Black-owned businesses interested in recapturing the neighborhood\u2019s legacy. <\/p>\n But she herself was nearly part of the exodus. She recounted her story as she sipped tea on the sun-soaked patio of a freshly built Starbucks across a parking lot from a Whole Foods \u2014 a suburban style marketplace that looked nothing like the rest of Englewood, but instead has become a symbol of another broken promise. <\/p>\n Former Mayor Rahm Emanuel once promoted the luxury grocer as a source of jobs and fresh food, \u201copening doors to a new future<\/a> for the Englewood community.\u201d But five years after the store opened, a flood of new development has yet to sweep through. <\/p>\n Butler\u2019s mother once worked in the bustling commercial strip that Whole Foods had promised to revive. Her parents met here, too. In 2002, Butler was ready to lay down her own roots and purchased a home not far from this spot. Then she researched nearby elementary schools for her daughter and, dismayed by the neighborhood\u2019s test scores, elected to send her to a public school in another Chicago community.<\/p>\n Life got even worse on the block. Gunfire rang out nearly every day. A stray bullet struck the house. Someone once tried to rob the family. By 2008, Butler was ready to leave. <\/p>\n Butler, like so many Englewood residents before her, built what she called \u201can exit plan.\u201d She would go to Villa Rica, Ga., an exotic-sounding Atlanta-area community where Black life seemed more prosperous. Many of her friends and family had already sought refuge in Georgia, Texas or Virginia, searching for a better quality of life: affordable and larger homes, warmer weather and better-performing schools.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat you knew, what you grew up with, what you could relate to, no longer exists,\u201d Butler said. \u201cWhen we bought our house, there were six more homes on that block. They\u2019re all gone now. It\u2019s almost like a vanishing act.\u201d<\/p>\n Places like Englewood that saw some of the highest number of homicides in the past two decades \u2014 467 in that neighborhood alone \u2014 have also had the largest outflow of Black residents, according to a POLITICO analysis of Chicago Police Department data<\/a>. The handful of the city\u2019s neighborhoods that grew their Black populations all had far fewer killings.<\/p>\n But the losses were also driven by a series of destabilizing events: the loss of manufacturing jobs, the demolition of public housing, a housing bubble, endemic gun violence and the closure of public schools.<\/p>\n What turned the small waves of Black residents leaving into a tsunami was the Chicago Housing Authority\u2019s decadelong effort to move residents out of public housing. Much of the city\u2019s public housing consisted of overcrowded high rises like the notorious Cabrini-Green<\/a> and the Robert Taylor Homes<\/a>, which were infested with rats and cockroaches and rife with gang activity<\/a>. But the demolition of Chicago\u2019s housing projects outpaced the construction of affordable housing, leaving thousands displaced. Many residents ended up in unfamiliar neighborhoods without social services to help them get a leg up, destabilizing middle-class neighborhoods in the process. Friction developed between new, low-income residents and longtime homeowners.<\/p>\n \u201cYou dumped people in communities simply because they\u2019re Black,\u201d said Delmarie Cobb, a longtime Illinois political operative who served as Hillary Clinton\u2019s Illinois press secretary in 2016 and worked on Rev. Jesse Jackson\u2019s 1988 presidential campaign.<\/p>\n \u201cYou would never have dumped disparate people in white communities.\u201d<\/p>\n With people leaving, the city started closing public schools, exacerbating a vicious cycle that continues to push out Chicago\u2019s Black residents while failing to attract enough new ones. The Chicago Board of Education and Emanuel closed 50 schools in 2013 \u2014 the largest mass school closing in the nation\u2019s history.<\/p>\n A moment of clarity persuaded Butler to stay. The sight of children playing in the dirt of a vacant lot outside her window one day, she said, inspired her to abandon the family exit plan and recommit to building back her neighborhood. She understands not everyone is willing to make a similar sacrifice. <\/p>\n \u201cThey want to try to stick it out,\u201d said Butler, whose Twitter handle is @mrs_englewood<\/a>. \u201cBut at the end of the day, all of us just want a community that\u2019s walkable, that is safe, and that we can raise our children in. Unfortunately, on our South and West sides, it\u2019s really difficult to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n West Englewood, not far from<\/span> Sawyer\u2019s ward, paints a stark picture of a neighborhood in transition. But the neighborhood isn\u2019t just a story of disappearance. While the Black population shrunk 33 percent since 2010 (from 34,178 and 22,912 in 2020), the Latino population is skyrocketing. It jumped from 774 Latinos in 2010 to 5,832 in 2020, according to the census. Latinos now make up nearly a fifth of the neighborhood \u2014 and their numbers are growing.<\/p>\n \u201cI remember 10 years ago, I walked the ward and could count on one hand how many Latino families are here. Now I can count two hands on every block. It\u2019s a phenomenal shift,\u201d said Alderman Raymond Lopez, who represents the part of the neighborhood on Chicago\u2019s City Council. <\/p>\n That migration has injected the Latino community with a sense of vitality that\u2019s built thriving commercial strips elsewhere in the city: 18th Street in Pilsen; 26th Street in Little Village, South Archer Avenue between McKinley and Brighton Park are each crammed with Spanish-language marquees, restaurants and life supplemented by a deep pool of lower-wage immigrant workers.<\/p>\n \u201cIn West Englewood, you\u2019re seeing the race line moving further East as Latinos are buying cheap houses and land. The same thing is happening in West Humboldt Park and Austin [on the city\u2019s West Side],\u201d said Frank Calabrese, who is advising the Latino Caucus on redistricting.<\/p>\n Rival ward maps have been pitched, each cementing Black or Latino power for the next decade amid the city\u2019s shifting demographics. <\/p>\n Latino council members, armed with fresh census data showing its population is up 5 percent and the Black population is down nearly 10 percent, filed a map with the city clerk\u2019s office last week that includes 15 Latino wards \u2014 one more than it has now \u2014 and two fewer Black majority wards. The Black Caucus has worked with the City Council\u2019s Rules Committee on a map that includes 16 majority Black wards (and one predominantly Black ward) and 14 Latino wards.<\/p>\n But the Black and Latino caucuses agree on one thing: It\u2019s also time to create an Asian-focused ward given that the city\u2019s 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 represented by white and Latino aldermen. <\/p>\n Calabrese argues that changes like those taking place in West Englewood show that the Black Caucus map<\/a> is out of touch with Chicago\u2019s current population trends. The Latino Caucus\u2019 map, he said, \u201creflects the reality of Chicago demographics today.\u201d<\/p>\n Alderman Jason Ervin, who heads the City Council\u2019s Black Caucus, takes issue with his Latino colleagues, who he sees as trying to squeeze out Black people from the City Council. \u201cIt\u2019s illegal,\u201d he said, referring to the Voting Rights Act. He argues that the Latino Caucus map<\/a> disenfranchises the city\u2019s Black population by diluting their power; he says he\u2019s ready to take the map his caucus supports and that was \u201cdeveloped by two-thirds of the members of the City Council\u201d to voters.<\/p>\n The City Council\u2019s fight to redraw boundaries has put a spotlight on Lightfoot, the city\u2019s third Black mayor, who won in a 2019 landslide on a reform-minded platform. She\u2019s mostly avoided jumping into the fight between Black and Latino lawmakers \u2014 even leaving town for Washington, D.C., on the day the council was supposed to vote on a map. <\/p>\n Lightfoot told POLITICO in an interview that she opposes gerrymandering that protects incumbents, and she has threatened to veto the first draft of the map supported by the Black Caucus because it protected an incumbent white alderman under federal indictment. <\/p>\n The mayor, a former prosecutor who for years handled redistricting cases in the courts, said, \u201cthe most important thing for me is not having districts or wards where there is zero competition.\u201d Lightfoot added: \u201cNobody should be guaranteed a seat for life.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re not going to get beyond [being] the most segregated city in the country if we don\u2019t start thinking about engaging with our residents,\u201d she said, \u201cand really, really rethinking the compact between government and the people in a very different way.\u201d <\/p>\n Chicago\u2019s ward map battle is playing out at the state and congressional levels, too. Boundary battles are an entrenched part of politicking in Illinois as they are across the country. While Illinois lost population overall \u2014 and a subsequent congressional seat \u2014 even outside of Chicago, the state saw its Latino population rise. The Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, which is also keeping a close watch on Chicago\u2019s ward map fight, said state lawmakers diluted Latino representation in the statehouse and filed a lawsuit against the state saying the map is discriminatory.<\/p>\n In a decade there will be another census, another fight over maps. For many voters, in a city facing inevitable demographic change, the question is whether Black and Latino leaders can form meaningful coalitions that bring investment, better schools and less violence to their communities \u2014 or whether they keep Chicago politics rooted in the realm of spectator sport.<\/p>\n \u201cWe live in a city that is two-thirds people of color so we\u2019ve got to figure out a way to get along,\u201d Lightfoot said. \u201cMy hope is that we get to a place where people are going to see that there\u2019s more to be gained by seeing the commonality and compromise.\u201d<\/p>\n Chicago\u2019s mapping fight<\/span> is more than just a turf battle. It\u2019s about who controls the future of the city.<\/p>\n Chicago effectively boasted a \u201cstrong mayor\u201d system of city government<\/a> for decades, but the council\u2019s legislative authority is still empowered to oversee an enormous amount of money and influence. Under Chicago\u2019s old system of patronage politics<\/a>, the city\u2019s 50 alderpersons became mini-mayors of their individual fiefdoms.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople in Chicago feel that an alderman, or alderwoman, is more important than a state representative,\u201d Rep. Jesus \u201cChuy\u201d Garcia (D-Ill.) said between votes in the U.S. Capitol, as he looked out from a balcony toward the Library of Congress and his office on a recent golden autumn afternoon.<\/p>\n And even, he said with a grin, more important than a member of Congress.<\/p>\n \u201cThe council is a place that can help ensure you protect against discrimination and racism and bring about more equitable investments into neighborhoods,\u201d said Garcia, a former Chicago alderman and mayoral candidate. <\/p>\n \u201cAnd a loss of that is probably perceived to be a loss in power, influence and protection.\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s irony in Chicago\u2019s transformation. Back in the day, the city was the engine driving the Great Migration, the epicenter for Black hope and aspirations. But despite all that, Black political ascendancy here proved to be short-lived. <\/p>\n Harold Washington charged into City Hall in 1983 atop a wave of minority and progressive support \u2014 only to see much of his authority stymied by an all-white City Council majority in a racially charged blockade known as the Council Wars. Garcia later won an aldermanic seat representing a slice of the city\u2019s Southwest Side in 1986, as part of special elections ordered by a federal court in seven wards redrawn to acknowledge the Black and Latino populations\u2019 voting power.<\/p>\n \u201cYou had a Black community that all of the sudden, out of nowhere, or out of sight of the prevailing white consciousness … elected the first Black mayor of the City of Chicago,\u201d said Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.), who co-founded the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party in the late \u201960s. <\/p>\n That, he said, \u201cbecame a threat to the hegemony of whites in this community, and it became a threat to a segregated Chicago.\u201d<\/p>\n Today, Black Chicagoans are still gripped by frustration: their political power, when it came, wasn\u2019t matched by the kind of economic clout needed to truly reshape the parts of the city they cared most about. So the city\u2019s low-income Black neighborhoods languished, even as white neighborhoods and racially diverse, middle-class neighborhoods like Hyde Park thrived.<\/p>\n On the city\u2019s West Side \u2014 another area riddled with violence \u2014 the Rev. Ira Acree has witnessed the rise and fall of Chicago\u2019s Black population firsthand. <\/p>\n \u201cAmerica is going to be a color-majority nation soon,\u201d Acree said, his brow still dotted with sweat an hour after an energetic service and two baptisms at Greater St. John Bible Church, a working-class Baptist church in Chicago\u2019s Austin neighborhood.<\/p>\n \u201cBut Blacks are going to be a significant minority in Chicago,\u201d Acree said. \u201cThat\u2019s going to hurt us with representation, because some of these Black elected officials are going to be losing their seats. And then it\u2019s going to be difficult to have an economic engine that runs in our community that we control.\u201d<\/p>\n If one challenge<\/span> for Chicago\u2019s power structure is managing this demographic change, there\u2019s another set of challenges for people with a different, maybe quixotic goal: Stopping the outflow.<\/p>\n Lightfoot, as well as other Black political leaders like Rush and Rep. Danny Davis (D-Ill.), believes it\u2019s possible to attract more Black middle-class and working-class people back to the city \u2014 preserving an important legacy \u2014 and keeping its foundation as a center of Black political power.<\/p>\n As Lightfoot sees it, the outmigration is slowing. Where others see displacement and population loss, Lightfoot sees possibility. The mayor says, and data backs her up, that many African Americans are leaving Chicago to go just over the border to Indiana.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s an opportunity to think of a strategy to bring people back,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n One proposal: In 2019, Lightfoot announced a plan to invest $750 million in public and private funds into 10 Chicago communities in the south and west of the city. The plan includes transforming vacant lots and rundown buildings into green spaces, grocery stores, streetscapes and affordable housing. A century-old firehouse in Englewood<\/a> will become a culinary center and business hub. An empty bank in Austin<\/a> will become a blues museum and cafe. <\/p>\n And just a few weeks ago, the mayor unveiled $126 million for development projects in the West Side\u2019s Humboldt Park neighborhood and another in South Shore, a predominantly Black, middle-class neighborhood. (And birthplace of Michelle Obama.) The projects include mixed-income housing and the reuse of historic buildings.<\/p>\n The projects are also projected to create 2,200 permanent or temporary jobs, which Lightfoot says are tantamount to shifting the population trend. \u201cThe biggest thing we can do to stop out-migration of African Americans from the city is to create jobs,\u201d she said. \u201cJobs that are attainable to the population that\u2019s leaving \u2014 which is working-class Blacks.\u201d<\/p>\n And Lightfoot proposed, and 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.<\/p>\nBlock by block, neighborhoods lost historically Black communities<\/h5>\n
Black residents at each Census<\/h6>\n
Among cities with the most Black residents, 9 of 10 had decreases since 2000<\/h5>\n
Some parts of Chicago saw half of Black population disappear<\/h5>\n
Percent change, Black residents 2000 – 2020<\/h6>\n
Where one proposed City Council map would strike Black-majority seats<\/h5>\n
These wards are remapped every 10 years. This proposal is from the Chicago City Council Latino Caucus.<\/h6>\n
Black residents are moving out of the areas with the most homicides<\/h5>\n
Neighborhoods, by Black population change and number of homicides<\/h6>\n
Chicago suburbs\u2019 Black population picked up while the city\u2019s fell<\/h5>\n
Black residents at each Census<\/h6>\n