The New York Public Library has made its vast photo archives, including scores of historic pictures of Bronzeville, easily searchable. [Courtesy of New York Public Library]
HYDE PARK — The New York Public Library has unlocked a treasure trove of images of the South Side of Chicago.
On Jan. 6, the library added 187,000 images to its online collections. But more important, the library made it dramatically easier to wade through the mountains of cigarette cards, sheet music and clippings to find those really odd — and sometimes disturbing — images of Chicago. (Search here)
A simple search of the word "Chicago" yielded 4,699 images. The archive is full of images of the South Side, ranging from a picture of a mob stoning a black man to death in Bronzeville to a mundane scene of people leaving Pilgrim Baptist Church on Easter Sunday.
The most shocking images come from “The Negro in Chicago: A Study of Race Relations and a Race Riot,” the University of Chicago report that came out after 38 people died and 537 people were injured in a race riot in 1919 sparked by the drowning of a black boy at 29th Street Beach.
This image of a mob precedes images of a black man being stoned to death in a book about the 1919 race riots in Chicago.
It’s shocking to see the images of homes in Bronzeville that were bombed, and black families buying food under the “protection” of police and armed militias.
But there are also images of black and white schoolchildren working together the same year of the race riots, cleaning up areas of Bronzeville.
Black and white schoolchildren during a cleanup campaign in Bronzeville the same year the city erupted in race riots
So many of the images of Chicago are mundane, but they also depict part of the largely forgotten daily routine of living on the South Side, particularly for blacks who had no other choice.
People leave Pilgrim Baptist Church on Easter Sunday in this undated photo.
The accomplishments that came blazing out of Bronzeville’s forced cohabitation of rich and poor are itemized in a 1925 “Souvenir of Negro Progress.”
Dentist C. Jesse Davis is show in a pamphlet on the accomplishments of people living in Bronzeville.
The progressiveness of the South Side music scene can be seen in candid shots from Gerri’s Palm Tavern.
Customers at the long-gone Gerri's Palm Tavern in Bronzeville
The exploitative path taken to black progress is given equal billing in the archive, with images like one of musician Arnold “Doc” Wiley performing in blackface before he became a Communist and got involved in civil rights causes.
Arnold "Doc" Wiley performs in blackface with pianist Joe Simms.
There are scores of images for fans of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, including stereoscopic vistas of seemingly every building from the fair.
And Pullman has plenty of mentions, particularly pictures of train cars and menus from the Pullman railroad but also postcards of some of the neighborhood landmarks. Stereoscopic images of cattle at the now closed Union Stock Yards and butchered hogs at Armour & Company meatpacking are also included.
This is not to say that other parts of the city don’t show up in the archive. There are collections of menus from the city’s fanciest hotels, and rafts of images of historic buildings, both still standing and long gone.
But it’s the South Side, and in particular Bronzeville, whose history seems to have found a home in the New York Public Library, and thankfully is again easily available to Chicagoans.
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