Chicago Social Workers and Blacks in the Progressive Era

This essay explores the relationship between social workers and blacks in Chicago between 1900 and 1920. In a city peopled by some thirty different nationalities, leading social workers discovered many similarities between poor blacks and poor immigrants, but they were impressed as well by the unique problems faced by black people because of racial discrimination. Both the charity and settlement wings of social work sought to discover in these years the place of blacks in a pluralistic society.