By Don Valentine
The “Great Migration” led thousands of discontented Black Southerners to the big cities of the North. That evolved into financially and culturally vibrant meccas like Harlem (and it’s Renaissance), Sweet Auburn avenue (Atlanta), U”-Street (Washington D.C.), Overtown (Miami), “Black Wall Street” (Tulsa) and Bronzeville/“The Black Metropolis” in Chicago. Bronzeville Vincennes.com wrote, “Bronzeville provided an isolated area for Blacks to live and work together. New Bronzeville residents cooperated and worked diligently to establish a community, complete with businesses, culture, and institutions, without the racial restrictions Blacks had experienced everywhere else. The community grew and flourished through the years, creating success stories in all areas, and earned the neighborhood the ‘Black Metropolis’ nickname.”
The Jim Crow stigma tainted Black business. CBS News reported, “Chicago’s business and social establishment was largely indifferent to the Black community… By 1908, Chicago’s first Black owned bank was founded by entrepreneur Jesse Binga…” Mr. Binga, a Pullman Porter, was a real estate maven, and a millionaire community leader. His phenomenal success caused the bank to be subject to repeated attacks by jealous White businessmen. The Chicago Tribune wrote, “He sold homes to Blacks in what were then predominantly White neighborhoods, enraging racist factions who made him the target of almost monthly bombings of his home and offices for a couple of years and put him at the center of the city’s ugly race riots of 1919.”
Bronzeville was the home to a prodigious amount of famous Blacks. This includes: Acclaimed journalist Ida B. Wells-Barnett who was an early leader in the Civil Rights movement, Black Communist author Richard Wright, the author of Native Son and Black Boy, and Bessie Coleman who was both the first Black woman and the first Native American to be a pilot.
The Chicago Blues movement had a unique impact on not just the Blues, but also the development of “Rock n Roll” and the ubiquitous R&B sound. Louis Armstrong, became one of the leading figures of jazz music. In addition to Louis Armstrong music heavyweights like Sam Cook, Dinah Washington, Quincy Jones, and Herbie Hancock all called Bronzeville home at some point.
Although most known for its musical royalty, Bronzeville also helped nurture the excellence and genius of individuals in other areas as well. Pulitzer Prize Winning Poet Gwendolyn Brooks, one of the nation’s most important 20th-century poets, lived and wrote in Bronzeville. Bronzeville Vincennes.com chronicled another facet of the community: “In 1891, Dr. Daniel Hale Williams established Provident Hospital–just two blocks from The Bronzeville Vincennes–in order to address the fact that African American physicians were not permitted to practice in most existing hospitals. Although the hospital was created to address the systemic racism in the health profession at the time, Provident Hospital served people of all races. Not just an institutional visionary, Dr Williams was a highly skilled physician, who, just two years after opening Provident Hospital, performed the first successful heart surgery in the United States.”
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