Chicago's Decades of Segregation Feed South and West Side Hardships
About 400,000 Black Chicagoans have left the city since 1980.
A street in Englewood, Chicago's South Side.
Photographer: Espen Rasmussen/Panos Pictures/ReduxThe roots of Chicago's modern-day challenges with crime, joblessness and inequality lie in decades-old divides that separate Black residents from White residents, and a prosperous downtown from neighborhoods to the south and west that have long struggled economically.
About 400,000 Black Chicagoans have left the city since 1980, including many middle-class families driven away by the historic legacy of racist real estate practices that kept them from moving into certain neighborhoods, the decline of the manufacturing industry and loss of jobs, and the more recent eruption of gun violence that shattered lives.
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