Puerto Ricans in Chicago

Puerto Ricans in Chicago are people living in Chicago who have ancestral connections to the island of Puerto Rico. They have contributed to the economic, social and cultural well-being of Chicago for more than seventy years.

The Puerto Rican community in Chicago has a history that stretches back more than 70 years. The first Puerto Rican migration in the 1930s to Chicago was not from the island but from New York City, and many settled on State Street just south of the downtown hotels. Only a small number of people joined this migration. The first large wave of migration to Chicago came in the late 1940s, where many settled in the "La Clark" neighborhood around Dearborn, La Salle and Clark Street just north of downtown. Starting in 1946, many people were recruited by Castle Barton Associates and other companies as low-wage, non-union foundry workers and domestic workers in hotels and private homes. As soon as they were established in Chicago, many were joined by their spouses and families.

By the 1960s, Chicago's Puerto Rican community was displaced by urban redevelopment; they moved north and west to Old Town, Lincoln Park, Lakeview and Wicker Park later centering in West Town and Humboldt Park on the city's West Side. They first moved into nearby Lincoln Park just over the Chicago River. Puerto Rican settlement also occurred in Lawndale, also on the city's West Side. City hall-sponsored gentrification in Lincoln Park began in the early 1960s and protested by a Lincoln Park Poor People's Coalition led by the Young Lords under the leadership of Jose Cha Cha Jimenez. The Puerto Rican community then moved north and west. Puerto Ricans living in Wicker Park and Lincoln were really one large neighborhood that became divided when the Kennedy Expressway was built in the early 1950s.

...
Wikipedia