Chicago Male

Illinois is a state in the Midwestern United States. It is the 5th most populous state and is often noted as a microcosm of the entire country. Chicago is the third most populous city in the United States, after New York City and Los Angeles. Major sections of the city include the central business district, called The Loop, and the North, the South, and West Sides.

From the last two decades of the 19th century, Chicago was the destination of waves of immigrants from Ireland, Southern, Central and Eastern Europe, including Italians, Jews, Poles, Bosnians, Czechs and African-Americans from the American South. Chicago’s black population doubled between 1910 and 1920 and again between 1920 and 1930. Arriving in hundreds of thousands during the Great Migration, the great majority were clustered in a so‑called “Black Belt” on the city’s South Side.

The newcomers had an immense cultural impact, called the Chicago Black Renaissance, in art, literature, and music. The 1920s also saw gangsters, including Al Capone, Dion O’Banion, Bugs Moran and Tony Accardo battle law enforcement and each other on the streets of Chicago during the Prohibition era. Chicago was the location of the infamous St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in 1929, where Al Capone sent men to gun down members of his rival gang, North Side.