The instrument returns
After the 2008 crash, contract-for-deed selling returned to Black neighborhoods; reporting traced it across Chicago by 2016.
Hyde Park, Chicago, 1832 to 2026
The Ground Keeps Moving
Federal surveyors finished this map of Chicago in 1940. It graded the city’s neighborhoods for mortgage lenders, A down to D, and the Black Belt runs through its middle in red.
A ten-minute walk down one century, on one map. Every figure carries its source, one tap away.
Chapter 1 of 13 · 1940
The map
Take the grades away and what is left is a survey of the same ground.
Take the survey away and it is ground again. Nothing about it prices a family.
Begin in 1832. Every line you just saw was drawn in the century between, and the chapters ahead show who drew each one.
What happened to this ground was engineered. Five instruments did the work, a realtors’ rule, a deed clause, a federal map, a demolition program, and a sales contract. Every one of them left a record. By the federal Survey of Consumer Finances in 2022, median family wealth nationwide stood at $285,010 for white families and $44,890 for Black families. This exhibit is the paperwork in between.
Chapter 2 of 13 · 1832 to 1889
The first taking
The 1833 Treaty of Chicago took about 5 million acres under force, this shore included. Within a few years the Potawatomi were marched west. The Pokagon Band counts more than 6,000 citizens today.
Posted to the ledger. 1833, Potawatomi land ceded under force.
In 1853 Paul Cornell bought 300 acres of this shore and platted a suburb to sell. The land agent’s 1851 map below shows the grid his purchase joined two years later.
Chapter 3 of 13 · 1893
The fair builds a neighborhood
The World’s Fair ran six months and drew about 27 million admissions. It left behind the hotels, the flats, and the raised rail embankment that cut the neighborhood in two.
Posted to the ledger. 1893, Housing stock built for a six-month fair.
At the Haitian Building, Ida B. Wells handed out 10,000 copies of a pamphlet titled The Reason Why the Colored American Is Not in the World’s Columbian Exposition. The exclusion was already organized.
At the fair itself, in her own words
“The exhibit of the progress made by a race in 25 years of freedom as against 250 years of slavery, would have been the greatest tribute to the greatness and progressiveness of American institutions which could have been shown the world.”
Ida B. Wells
1862 to 1931
Preface, The Reason Why the Colored American Is Not in the World’s Columbian Exposition, 1893
By the time anyone graded this ground, it had been changing hands for a century.
Chapter 4 of 13 · 1921 to 1970
Five instruments
Before the story reaches them, see all five at once.
- The realtors’ rulethe code1921 to 1950written out 1950
- Restrictive covenantsthe deed1927 to 1948unenforceable 1948
- Redliningthe map1934 to 1968outlawed 1968
- Urban renewalthe bulldozer1952 to now
- Contract sellingthe contract1952 to 1970returned after 2008
Taken together the five spans cover 1921 to now with no year uncovered. The solid band marks 1921 to 1970, when no year passed with every instrument off. An open band continues from 1970 to now, because urban renewal never switched off.
From 1921 to 1970 there was no year the machinery was off. When a court closed one instrument, another was already running.
It began by hand, in 1908.
Chapter 5 of 13 · 1908 to 1917
The purge
In autumn 1908 the Hyde Park Improvement Protective Club organized to remove every Black neighbor, block by block, by name. Among the people it meant was Fannie Barrier Williams, the neighbor the club shut out.
Posted to the ledger. 1908, A neighborhood organizes to remove its neighbors.
Chapter 6 of 13 · 1917 to 1921
The bombing years
From July 1917 to March 1921 the commission recorded 58 bombings. Its report documents 40 of them one by one, and this table holds all 40. The map can place 32, 24 at a street address and 8 at a block. Across all 58 the record shows 2 arrests. No convictions.
The commission measured the pace itself, an average of one race bombing every twenty days for three years and eight months.
The dashed square on the map is the commission’s own. Thirty-two of the fifty-eight bombs fell within the square bounded by Forty-first and Sixtieth streets, Cottage Grove Avenue and State Street.
| Date | Target | Conviction |
|---|---|---|
| July 1, 1917 | S. P. Motley home5230 Maryland Ave | No conviction recorded. |
| About May 25, 1918 | Building occupied by Black families4529 Vincennes Ave | No conviction recorded. |
| Before 1919 | Property held by Black real estate agentsBerkeley Ave just north of 43rd St | No conviction recorded. |
| Before 1919 | Property held by Black real estate agentsBerkeley Ave just north of 43rd Stsecond attack here | No conviction recorded. |
| Before 1919 | Buildings in the 4500 block of Vincennes Ave4500 block Vincennes Ave | No conviction recorded. |
| Before 1919 | Buildings in the 4500 block of Vincennes Ave4500 block Vincennes Avesecond attack here | No conviction recorded. |
| Before 1919 | Buildings in the 4500 block of Vincennes Ave4500 block Vincennes Avethird attack here | No conviction recorded. |
| Before 1919 | Buildings in the 4500 block of Vincennes Ave4500 block Vincennes Avefourth attack here | No conviction recorded. |
| Before 1919 | Property at 4200 Wabash Ave | No conviction recorded. |
| Before 1919 | Property at 4200 Wabash Avesecond attack here | No conviction recorded. |
| Before 1919 | Property at 4732 Indiana Ave | No conviction recorded. |
| January 1919 | Black real estate agentNo address recorded | No conviction recorded. |
| January 1919 | White real estate agentNo address recorded | No conviction recorded. |
| March 1919 | Jesse Binga real estate office4724 State St | No conviction recorded. |
| March 1919 | Apartment building4041 Calumet Ave | No conviction recorded. |
| April 1919 | Wimes & Lassiter, Black real estate dealers4722 Indiana Ave | No conviction recorded. |
| About April 7, 1919 | Flat building occupied by Black families4212 Ellis Ave | No conviction recorded. |
| May 1, 1919 | Building occupied by Black residents3365 Indiana AveA six-year-old child was killed here. | No conviction recorded. |
| May 17, 1919 | Mrs. Gertrude Harrison home4708 Grand Blvd | No conviction recorded. |
| May 18, 1919 | Mrs. Gertrude Harrison home4708 Grand Blvdsecond attack here | No conviction recorded. |
| June 4, 1919 | House adjacent to the Motley homehouse adjacent to 5230 Maryland Ave | No conviction recorded. |
| November 12, 1919 | Jesse Binga real estate office4724 State Stsecond attack here | No conviction recorded. |
| About December 3, 1919 | Jesse Binga residence5922 South Park Ave | No conviction recorded. |
| December 26, 1919 | J. H. Coleman homeNo address recorded | No conviction recorded. |
| December 27, 1919 | Jesse Binga residence5922 South Park Avesecond attack here | No conviction recorded. |
| January 5, 1920 | Mrs. Mary Byron Clarke home4404-4406 Grand Blvd | No conviction recorded. |
| January 6, 1920 | W. B. Austin homeNorth Side | No conviction recorded. |
| February 1920 | Building recently sold to the Appomattox ClubNo address recorded | No conviction recorded. |
| February 1, 1920 | R. W. Woodfolk flat building4722 Calumet Ave | No conviction recorded. |
| February 12, 1920 | Mrs. Mary Byron Clarke home4404-4406 Grand Blvdsecond attack here | No conviction recorded. |
| February 28, 1920 | Jesse Binga residence5922 South Park Avethird attack here | No conviction recorded. |
| About March 5, 1920 | George A. Hyers propertyNo address recorded | No conviction recorded. |
| March 10, 1920 | Moses Fox home442 E 45th St | No conviction recorded. |
| About April 3, 1920 | Four-story flat building owned by Robert B. Jackson423 E 48th Pl | No conviction recorded. |
| April 13, 1920 | Mrs. Mary Byron Clarke home4404-4406 Grand Blvdthird attack here | No conviction recorded. |
| April 25, 1920 | Crede Hubbard three-flat building4331 Vincennes Ave | No conviction recorded. |
| May 1920 | Clubhouse of a Black club of 600 membersNo address recorded | No conviction recorded. |
| June 18, 1920 | Jesse Binga residence5922 South Park Avefourth attack here | No conviction recorded. |
| November 23, 1920 | Jesse Binga residence5922 South Park Avefifth attack here | No conviction recorded. |
| February 1921 | Three-story apartment buildingNo address recorded | No conviction recorded. |
| Totals for the full survey period.58 bombings, July 1917 to March 19212 killed, both Black0 convictions | ||
The record counts the dead. It names neither; one was a child of six.
The commission recorded the answer the bombing years got. “Only two of the forty Negro families bombed have moved; the others have made repairs, secured private watchmen or themselves kept vigil for night bombers, and still occupy the properties.”
Three years and eight months of dynamite enforced the line before any paper did.
Posted to the ledger. 1919, Dead in the riot, families burned out.
Chapter 7 of 13 · 1921 to 1947
The paperwork
The realtors’ rule, quoted in full
“A Realtor should never be instrumental in introducing into a neighborhood a character of property or occupancy, members of any race or nationality, or any individuals whose presence will clearly be detrimental to property values in that neighborhood.”
Chicago’s board had already set the penalty in 1921. Expulsion awaited any member who sold to a Black family on a white block.
Restrictive agreement, printed form
the model’s terms, described, not quotedA clause in the title barring sale or rental to anyone who was not white, binding every future owner.
A neighbor signed it and a county clerk recorded it. The printed model came from the national association’s counsel.
Whoever owned the lot could not sell it, lease it, or rent it to anyone who was not white. The promise bound the next owner, and every owner after that, and any neighbor could go to court to enforce it.
In 1927 the Realtors’ general counsel drafted a model covenant that real estate boards printed for any block to adopt. By the 1940s, hundreds of Cook County subdivisions carried covenants.
Posted to the ledger. 1927, Covenants spread across Cook County.
Chapter 8 of 13 · 1933 to 1940
The plan goes federal
September 1939. Federal surveyors begin filing their sheets on Chicago, and each area takes its grade the moment its sheet is signed.
Through the winter the sheets keep coming and the map fills, area by area, in the order the surveyors filed them.
By spring 1940 the survey is done. The map you began with is back. This time you watched it drawn.
The sheets behind the grades
Each grade on this map rests on a form a federal surveyor filed. Here is what two of those forms say, word for word.
Grade A, best
Sheet A11
“The neighborhood is restricted against Jewish, except on Maple Hill Road.”
The surveyor lists the restriction among the merits of the best grade.
Read the full sheet in the study roomGrade D, hazardous
Sheet D106
“So far, the area is not restricted as to sale to colored people.”
On the lowest grade, the surveyor’s “so far” treats restriction as the expected condition.
Read the full sheet in the study roomAcross all 576 sheets
The pattern holds across the whole survey.
- RaceNot one A grade sheet with a race entry records a Black resident; 89 of the 122 D grade sheets with an entry do
- Infiltration26 sheets name Negro or colored under the form's Infiltration question, 25 of them graded D
- Mortgage fundsOn A grade sheets lenders report mortgage money ample or good 23 times and limited never; on D grade sheets, limited or unavailable 97 times against 10 ample
- BlightedThe word blighted appears in the remarks of 37 D grade sheets and of no A or B sheet
Tap any area of the map for the sheet behind its grade, or choose an area below.
From 1945 to 1959, under 2 percent of federally insured home loans went to Black Americans. The city’s doctrine had become the country’s underwriting.
Posted to the ledger. 1939, Graded hazardous. The manual scores race as risk.
Chapter 9 of 13 · 1937 to 1948
The walls crack
One route, four rulings
The red line is the practice of exclusion. Where a ruling barred one lane, the practice turned into the next.
Open any ruling below
Solid bars mark rulings that closed a lane. The split bar marks the crack.
Open any ruling below
Hansberry v. Lee
311 U.S. 32 · 1940
The holding
The earlier covenant judgment does not bind the Hansberrys, who were never represented in that case.
The consequence
A Chicago family wins on procedure. The gate cracks but stands.
Hansberry v. Lee, 1940The opinion, at Justia
6140 South Rhodes Avenue
The Hansberrys moved here in 1937, inside covenanted territory. One of the children in the house was seven-year-old Lorraine.
in summaryShe was a child when her family moved into covenanted territory near Washington Park and a mob gathered outside. She grew up to put the memory on stage in A Raisin in the Sun.
Lorraine Hansberry1930 to 1965
Playwright; the child in the house behind Hansberry v. Lee
To Be Young, Gifted and Black, 1969; Hansberry v. Lee, 311 U.S. 32
The courts cracked the paper and the money changed instruments.
Posted to the ledger. 1948, Covenants ruled unenforceable.
Chapter 10 of 13 · 1949 to 1963
The university rebuilds the neighborhood
The South East Chicago Commission, founded 1952 and run by Julian Levi, drew an 856-acre renewal plan for this ground. The first demolition came May 10, 1955, before the council approved it.
The same ground, two states
The plan the council approved marked 638 buildings for demolition on this ground.
One mark, one family
One square is one displaced family. About 4,000, an estimate.
About 4,000 familiesreported were moved off the renewal ground over the course of the program. Each square above marks one household once.
Of the displaced who could be traced, 46 percent of white families stayed in Hyde Park and Kenwood. About 17 percent of Black families did. The neighborhood’s Black population fell about 40 percent.
Posted to the ledger. 1962, Families removed by the renewal.
In his own words
“urban renewal, which means moving the Negroes out… it means Negro removal, that is what it means”
The removal was now policy, carried out with public money.
Chapter 11 of 13 · 1952 to 1970
The color tax
Of Cook County’s 241 white-run savings and loans, exactly one would lend to a Black buyer. The alternative was the land contract, no equity until the last payment, eviction after one miss.
Two buyers, one house
Both families buy the same house on the same day. One carries a federally insured mortgage. One signs a land contract. The columns count what each pays beyond a fair price, in the study’s 2019 dollars.
$587 more every monthreported
The mortgage buyer
$0
beyond a fair price
The contract buyer
$71,027
beyond a fair price
The study’s average, about $71,000 more for the same house. 121 months at $587 more is $71,027.
10 yr 1 mo
The track ends where the extra payments reach the study’s average.
An average of $71,000 more per homereported
The figure is the study’s average loss per contract-buying family, in 2019 dollars. The study found an 84 percent average markupreported over what sellers had just paid for the same houses.
The worked example
Clyde Ross, North Lawndale
Clyde Ross's contract price, $27,500reported
the seller had paid $12,000 months earlierreported
More than double what the seller had paid, months apart, for the same house. His case ran worse than the study’s average.
Chapter 12 of 13 · 1968 to 1971
The Contract Buyers League
The one warm room
January 1968, a church basement in North Lawndale. Neighbors who had bought on contract began reading their agreements to each other and heard the same terms on every page. They organized as the Contract Buyers League.
When the neighbors compared their contracts, she was among the first to stand and read hers out loud. The league that followed renegotiated contract after contract at fair value.
Ruth WellsContract Buyers League, 1968 to 1971
Among the first to stand up in the church basement and say what she had paid
Satter, Family Properties, 2009, Contract Buyers League chapters
He came north from Mississippi, bought on contract at twenty-seven thousand five hundred dollars for a house the seller had bought at twelve thousand, and spent years organizing so the next family would know the trap.
Clyde Ross1923 to 2021
Contract buyer in North Lawndale, Contract Buyers League organizer
Coates, The Case for Reparations, The Atlantic, 2014
The record, one line
about 500 families on payment strikereported155 contracts renegotiated by July 1971reportedthe one creditAn average of $14,000 saved per renegotiated contractreported
The strike had a price.
about 70 families permanently lost their homesreported
Two years before the basement filled, King had taken a flat in the same neighborhood.
He took a North Lawndale flat in January 1966 to make Chicago’s housing the movement’s northern front. The marches he led into all-white neighborhoods that summer put open housing on the national agenda, and the Fair Housing Act followed in 1968.
Martin Luther King Jr.1929 to 1968
Brought the movement to Chicago’s housing in 1966
Chicago Magazine, August 2016; Fair Housing Act, 1968
The neighbors in the basement organized and won some of it back.
Posted to the ledger. 1958, The color tax per contract-buying family.
Posted to the ledger. 1971, Contract Buyers League renegotiations.
Chapter 13 of 13 · 1971 to 2026
The ledger and the ground today
Say the story ended in 1970, two generations back. The record since then answers on its own.
The grades still price the ground
Measured across today’s census tracts matched to the surveyors’ polygons.
- median income today, $207,434 on former A land, $65,240 on former D
- homeownership today, 90 percent on former A land, 44 percent on former D
- 97 percent of affordable housing sites and 93 percent of TIF sites sit on former C or D land
The ground is moving again
In Woodlawn, on the blocks around the new presidential center.
- East Woodlawn's median price doubled since 2019, to about $440,000reported
- the Obama Presidential Center opened June 19, 2026
- less than a third of nearby housing still affordable by 2024reported
- the Woodlawn Housing Preservation Ordinance, September 2020
- five years on, one project built on the 52 reserved lotsreported
Illinois created a process for removing racial covenants from deeds in 2022.
The Realtors delivered a formal apology in November 2020.
The account · 1833 to 2026
Dollars of their year. Entries do not sum.
| Year | Entry | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| 1833 | Potawatomi land ceded under force | |
| 1893 | Housing stock built for a six-month fair | |
| 1908 | A neighborhood organizes to remove its neighbors | |
| 1919 | Dead in the riot, families burned out | 38 deadabout 1,000 burned out |
| 1927 | Covenants spread across Cook County | |
| 1939 | Graded hazardous. The manual scores race as risk | |
| 1948 | Covenants ruled unenforceable | |
| 1958 | The color tax per contract-buying family | $71,000per family2019 dollars |
| 1962 | Families removed by the renewal | |
| 1971 | Contract Buyers League renegotiationscredit | $14,000per contract |
| 2026 | The century’s bill, still outstanding | $3.2 to $4billion2019 dollars$285,010against $44,8902022 national medians |
Posted to the ledger. 2026, The century’s bill, still outstanding.
The two medians, drawn to one scale
From here the page itself is the measure. Both 2022 medians of family wealth nationwide run at one scale from the same zero line. The Black median completes in about one screen. The white median keeps the page going.
Skip the climbboth start here, at zero
Black median$44,890
white median$285,010
The Black median ends here.Median Black family wealth, $44,890
twice the Black median
three times the Black median
four times the Black median
five times the Black median
six times, and still going
The white median keeps going.
The white median ends here.Median white family wealth, $285,010
Both columns, one frame
Median family wealth nationwide, the 2022 survey.
Median white family wealth, $285,010
Median Black family wealth, $44,890
a wealth gap of more than six to one
The grades, the bombings, and the ground moving again, on the one map. The Hyde Park line marks where the walk began; the rust ring at East Woodlawn is 2026.
One question is still open, the one the surveyors answered about every block on this map.
Uses your device location once, with your permission. Nothing leaves this page.
The exhibit ends on a question
Who is this ground for, and who decides?
Answers appear here once the first ones clear review.
Colophon
The Ground Keeps Moving
1832 to 2026
127 registered facts · 71 works and records
rooted-forward.org
Every figure in this exhibit resolves to a registered fact with a named source. The full record, the surveyors’ sheets included, is one door away.
The source record
The 127 facts rest on 71 works and records, alphabetized.
Read the full record
- James Baldwin, interviewed by Kenneth Clark. Kenneth B. Clark interview with James Baldwin, WGBH (1963)
- Black Hawk War records (1832)
- Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, FEDS Notes. Greater Wealth, Greater Uncertainty, Changes in Racial Inequality in the Survey of Consumer Finances (2023)
- Chicago Commission on Race Relations. The Negro in Chicago, A Study of Race Relations and a Race Riot (1922)
- Chicago Covenants Project (LaDale Winling). History (2021)
- The Chicago Defender. Chicago Defender coverage of South Side covenants (1938)
- Chicago Housing Authority. Chicago Housing Authority tenant study (1939)
- Chicago Magazine. Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1966 Chicago Campaign (2016)
- The Chicago Reporter. Inside the Contract Buyers League's fight against housing discrimination (2019)
- City of Chicago; National Register of Historic Places. Illinois Central track elevation ordinance and Metra Electric National Register documentation (1892)
- City of Chicago. Lorraine Hansberry House landmark designation report (2010)
- City of Chicago. Woodlawn Housing Preservation Ordinance (2020)
- Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic. The Case for Reparations (2014)
- St. Clair Drake and Horace R. Cayton. Black Metropolis (1945)
- Encyclopaedia Britannica. World's Columbian Exposition (accessed 2026)
- Encyclopedia of Chicago. Chicago Defender (2005)
- Encyclopedia of Chicago. Hyde Park (2005)
- Encyclopedia of Chicago. Hyde Park Township (2005)
- Encyclopedia of Chicago. Woodlawn (2005)
- Equal Justice Initiative calendar entry and covenant scholarship. Chicago Real Estate Board vote of May 4, 1921 (1921)
- Federal Housing Administration. Underwriting Manual, Underwriting and Valuation Procedure Under Title II of the National Housing Act (1938)
- Federal Housing Administration (underwriting system built under Frederick Babcock). FHA Underwriting Manual (1938)
- Thomas W. Hanchett, in From Tenements to the Taylor Homes, Penn State University Press. The Other 'Subsidized Housing', Federal Aid to Suburbanization, 1940s-1960s (2000)
- C. Lowell Harriss, National Bureau of Economic Research. History and Policies of the Home Owners' Loan Corporation (1951)
- Don Hayner. Binga, The Rise and Fall of Chicago's First Black Banker (2019)
- Amy E. Hillier. Redlining and the Home Owners' Loan Corporation (2003)
- Arnold R. Hirsch. Making the Second Ghetto, Race and Housing in Chicago 1940-1960 (1983)
- Home Owners' Loan Corporation. HOLC City Survey program (1940)
- Home Owners' Loan Corporation surveyors, transcribed by Mapping Inequality (University of Richmond Digital Scholarship Lab). HOLC area description sheets, metropolitan Chicago (1940)
- Homer Hoyt. One Hundred Years of Land Values in Chicago (1933)
- Homer Hoyt, Federal Housing Administration. The Structure and Growth of Residential Neighborhoods in American Cities (1939)
- Caroline Hugh, CEGU, University of Chicago. Constructing a Compatible Community (2023)
- Hyde Park Herald. Lost Hyde Park, Land Clearance (2022)
- Hyde Park Historical Society. Paul Cornell (2024)
- Illinois Answers Project. Chicago's efforts to keep housing affordable in Woodlawn fall short (2026)
- Illinois General Assembly. Illinois Public Act 102-0110 (2021)
- Whet Moser, Chicago Magazine. Chicago's Urban Renewal Displaced an Astonishing Number of People in the 20th Century (2018)
- National Association of Real Estate Boards. NAREB Code of Ethics revision history (1950)
- National Association of Real Estate Boards. NAREB Code of Ethics, Article 34 (1924)
- National Association of Realtors. NAR president Charlie Oppler's fair housing apology (2020)
- National Consumer Law Center. Toxic Transactions, How Land Installment Contracts Once Again Threaten Communities of Color (2016)
- National Park Service. Fannie Barrier Williams (2020)
- Nelson, Winling, Marciano, Connolly, et al., University of Richmond. Mapping Inequality, Redlining in New Deal America (Chicago HOLC map and area descriptions) (2023)
- The New York Times. He Saved a Sinking Community, Renewal Advocate Julian Levi Dies (1996)
- Obama Foundation. Obama Presidential Center Grand Opening (2026)
- Pokagon Band of Potawatomi. Pokagon Band of Potawatomi (2023)
- Rooted Forward research (Zain Zaidi). HOLC Redlining Grades and Present-Day Neighborhood Outcomes in Chicago (2026)
- Peter H. Rossi and Robert A. Dentler. The Politics of Urban Renewal, The Chicago Findings (1961)
- Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity, Duke University, with the Nathalie P. Voorhees Center, UIC. The Plunder of Black Wealth in Chicago, New Findings on the Lasting Toll of Predatory Housing Contracts (2019)
- Beryl Satter. Family Properties, Race, Real Estate, and the Exploitation of Black Urban America (2009)
- Allan H. Spear. Black Chicago, The Making of a Negro Ghetto 1890-1920 (1967)
- Treaty of Chicago terms and removal record (1833)
- U.S. Census Bureau. 1910 U.S. Census, Chicago (1910)
- U.S. Census Bureau. 1940 U.S. Census, Chicago (1940)
- U.S. Supreme Court. Buchanan v. Warley, 245 U.S. 60 (1917)
- U.S. Supreme Court. Corrigan v. Buckley, 271 U.S. 323 (1926)
- U.S. Supreme Court. Hansberry v. Lee, 311 U.S. 32 (1940)
- U.S. Supreme Court. Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1 (1948)
- United States Census Bureau. 1890 United States Census (1890)
- United States Congress. Civil Rights Act of 1968, Title VIII (Fair Housing Act) (1968)
- United States Congress. Housing Act of 1949 (1949)
- United States Congress. National Housing Act of 1934 (1934)
- United States with the united Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi nations. Treaty of Chicago, 1833 (7 Stat. 431) (1833)
- University of Chicago Board of Trustees action. Chicago Maroons football, abolition of the varsity program (1939)
- University of Chicago Library, Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center. Guide to the Hyde Park, Kenwood, and Woodlawn Neighborhoods Collection 1883-2004
- University of Chicago Library. Renewal and Revival, University of Chicago Centennial Catalogues (1992)
- Ida B. Wells, Frederick Douglass, Irvine Garland Penn, and Ferdinand L. Barnett. The Reason Why the Colored American Is Not in the World's Columbian Exposition (1893)
- Wikipedia. Paul Cornell (lawyer) (accessed 2026)
- Wikipedia. World's Columbian Exposition (accessed 2026)
- LaDale C. Winling and Todd M. Michney. The Roots of Redlining, Academic, Governmental, and Professional Networks in the Making of the New Deal Lending Regime (2021)
- LaDale Winling and the Chicago Covenants Project. Chicago Covenants Project research (2023)
Polygons and area descriptions from Mapping Inequality (Robert K. Nelson, LaDale Winling, et al., University of Richmond Digital Scholarship Lab), CC BY-NC 4.0. Underlying HOLC records are public domain.
The map’s ground layers are drawn from the City of Chicago community area boundaries and the Chicago Park District park boundaries, both from the City of Chicago Data Portal, and from the U.S. Census Bureau’s TIGER/Line 2023 files (public domain), which carry the streets, the municipal landmass, Lake Michigan, the Chicago River, and the canals. The far water beyond the county line is filled from the eastern edge of the recorded polygons. The mile section grid follows the street-grid arithmetic documented in this exhibit’s bombing geocoding notes.
The ledger. Entries post as the story reaches them.