A Easter Sunday matinee in Chicago, Illinois, in 1941
At the time, African Americans were limited to an area of Chicago known as the “Black Belt"
There are a few photos that I can't get out of my head until I find the time to work on them. This one that I shared last week was one I'd been wanting to colorize for ages, and I was ecstatic when I finally had the opportunity to do so. The photo was taken by the amazing photographer Russell Lee in Chicago, Illinois, in 1941, and it is connected to this collection I'm about to share with you today.
Some of the original photographs (provided by the Library of Congress), including this one below, which I colorized today, have the same caption: “Children in front of moving picture theater, Easter Sunday matinee, Black Belt, Chicago, Illinois.”
The term "Black Belt" was used primarily to describe the African American community on Chicago's South Side from the start of the twentieth century until after World War II.
In April 1941, the Farm Security Administration (an agency created in 1937 to combat rural poverty during the Great Depression) dispatched American photographer Russell Lee, accompanied by Edwin Rosskam - who had prompted the initiative; to work in the region as part of an effort to document how people lived across the United States.
Lee and Rosskam created a remarkable collection. Their pictures portray people engaged in a variety of activities, ranging from roller skating to Easter worshipping.
Ta-Nehisi Coates writes:
“By the 1940s, Chicago led the nation in the use of these restrictive covenants, and about half of all residential neighborhoods in the city were effectively off-limits to blacks.
It is common today to become misty-eyed about the old black ghetto, where doctors and lawyers lived next door to meatpackers and steelworkers, who themselves lived next door to prostitutes and the unemployed. This segregationist nostalgia ignores the actual conditions endured by the people living there—vermin and arson, for instance—and ignores the fact that the old ghetto was premised on denying black people privileges enjoyed by white Americans.”
Lee and Rosskam, with the help of author Richard Wright, spent three weeks in “Black Belt” documenting everything. The result of their collaboration is a book titled 12 Million Black Voices, which featured only a few of Lee's 420 photographs. It also includes photos taken by Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans and Ben Shahn.
“Black Belt” was located between 12th and 79th streets and Wentworth and Cottage Grove avenues. Poverty could be seen everywhere - including in many of these pictures.
This article explains that “(…) the Great Migration, when African Americans left the South for Chicago with the promise of better jobs and reduced oppression, began in 1916. The reality, however, fell far short of these promises, as conditions were still repressive and segregated. African Americans were restricted to live in the Black Belt in white-owned housing that was largely dilapidated and densely populated yet more expensive than housing in white areas.”
Another article, this one by the Chicago Public Library, describes this difficult part of Chicago’s history:
“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. These apartments often had no bathrooms, with all the occupants of a floor having to share a single hall unit. Buildings sometimes lacked such basic amenities as proper heating. Residents used kerosene lamps instead, and their improvised stoves often overheated and caused fires. The partitions used to divide the apartments were flammable as well, adding to the hazardous conditions. 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. These conditions of ramshackle and dangerous housing, neglect and indifference from city officials and poor sanitation resulted in infestation by rats.”
In 1948, the Supreme Court ruled 6 to 0 that agreements to bar racial minorities from residential areas are discriminatory and cannot be enforced by the courts.
See more photographs from the collection here, and another one of these stylish kids colorized by me. Prints are available here, here and here.
Share your thoughts in the comments if you can. I'd love to read them.
Further Reading