01/31/2025
TEACHING MOMENT 👇“Did You Know?”The City of Chicago Was Founded & Settled by A Black Man
Chicago. A Black man. From Haiti. From the continent of Africa. An Immigrant.
Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, an immigrant, a black man of Haitian descent, of Origins from the continent of Africa, first settled and founded the entire territory along Lake Michigan, in the 1780''s, in what would later be called Chicago.
Philip Green
2024, The Vine Magazine
Jean Baptiste Point du Sable is the founder of Chicago. Born in Haiti around 1750, Point du Sable traveled to North America in his twenties and settled on the shores of Lake Michigan, an area that would eventually develop into the city of Chicago.
The name Chicago was first recorded in 1688, where it appears as Chigagou, an Algonquian Indian (native indigenous people) word meaning “onion field.”
Chicago’s first permanent settler in 1779 was Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, a trapper and merchant credited with building the trading post that evolved into Chicago.
With French and African parentage, du Sable hailed from Haiti and settled in what was to become Chicago with his Potawatomi wife, Kittihawa.
He is honored in Chicago with Jean Baptiste Point DuSable Lake Shore Drive, DuSable Bridge on Michigan Avenue, and the DuSable Museum of African American History.
Du Sable is also commemorated by a huge bust in front of the Evanston Public Library đź“š
Photo 2024 by Philip Green.
