CHICAGO (WGN) — Friday, Feb. 7, will mark 160 years since Illinois struck down laws that kept free Black people from entering the state and gave those already in the state just 10 days to get out.
Twelve years before that, a historic meeting took place in what’s now downtown Chicago, at Clark and Randolph, where men and women from across the country worked to find a way for Illinois’ Black residents to enjoy the American promise of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Slavery existed in what would become Illinois for about half a century before the area gained statehood in 1818 outlawing the practice.
But in 1853, Illinois passed a so called “Black Law” also known as a “Black Code.” And at the time, it was the harshest restriction of black people in the country.
Kate Masur is a historian and professor at Northwestern University and author of the book “Until Justice Be Done.”
“There were already a whole lot of discriminatory policies on the books. But this new law went a step further, basically barring Black migration into the state,” she said. “And if people came in and were found to be illegally in the state, they would be fined. And if they could not pay the fine, they could be forced to labor without pay, which is why some people called it the slave law. … It was a really punitive, really racist law.”
Well into the years approaching the civil war, the Land of Cincoln struggled to find its footing when it came to rights for black citizens.
More information
Colored Conventions Project
Northwestern: Documenting Illinois’ first statewide Black political conference
“A lot of African Americans living South of the Ohio River really did see Illinois and Indiana as better places to go. Slavery wasn’t technically legal in those places,” Masur said. “And yet… Illinois and Indiana had these laws that were explicitly anti-Black.”
So Black leaders in Illinois mobilized and gathered business owners, tradesmen, ministers, and other influential African Americans from across the county to gather in the state.
The Illinois Colored Convention of 1853 was so big, it drew the attention of Frederick Douglass, who delivered the keynote address.
“Frederick Douglass was the most prominent Black man in America at that time, a statesman in a lot of regards, so he was at the vanguard of this idea that Black people are citizens of the united states, they were born on American soil and they have rights,” Northwestern University Researcher Marquis Taylor said.
Graduate student Taylor is one of the researchers from Northwestern who contributed to the Colored Conventions Project, a digital exhibit documenting the important conversations that were had at the historic event.
“The central priority was getting those laws repealed, but there were other things on the table… about promoting economic activity,” Taylor said. “Black people in the state are paying taxes for the development of public schools, however Black children are denied access to those schools, right?”
One of the delegates in attendance was, Martin Delany, an educated free man who had been admitted to Harvard Medical School but was asked to leave amid widespread protests from white students. He argued that blacks should consider leaving the country.
“The Chicago Convention resolves that we’re not interested in any of that, and they basically say, we should stay here. We are Americans and we should be claiming our rights here,” Taylor said.
The decision is recorded in the conference’s resolutions, stating opposition to “all attempts …to expatriate us from the land of our birth. ” Declaring “we will plant our trees in American soil, and repose in the shade thereof.”
Illinois representative Jehan Gordon Booth says she’s grateful for the groundwork laid so long ago.
“When I see myself in this space, serving in the state capitol not just as a Black person, but as a woman, serving in leadership… a few generations ago I would have only been able to sweep those floors,” she said. “The only reason I’m able to do the things that I’m able to do, and work on behalf of the people, and provide representation to people who look like me and those who don’t is because of those leaders of that time, that decided that we may not be able to experience the shade of the tree that we plant, but we’re going to do it anyway.”
Masur, hopes all Illinoisans will find inspiration in the states’ sometimes complicated history.
“I have always thought it was a momentous day in Illinois history. That after all this struggle to repeal these laws that were so inequitable and so racist that it finally happens February 7th of 1865,” she said. “And I’ve always felt like having recognition of that would be really amazing. Because it would shed light both on the negative aspects of American history … but at the same time could recognize the black activism, the political struggles, the fight for equality and the accomplishments of what they were able to do in a way that shows these issues are with us to this day. Those struggles continue.“
