Your path leads to the symbolic gateway of Bronzeville, the Black Metropolis. During the Great Migration of the early twentieth century, hundreds of thousands of African Americans fled the Jim Crow South for Chicago, and many settled here on the South Side, building a thriving city within the city: Black-owned banks, newspapers, theaters, and the churches and clubs that birthed Chicago jazz and blues. The Victory Monument before you, dedicated in 1928, honors the Eighth Regiment of the Illinois National Guard, an African American unit that fought in France in World War I as part of the 370th Infantry.
Its bronze figures of a soldier, Columbia, and a Black doughboy stand at 35th and King Drive, long the neighborhood's main artery. Notice this boulevard, once the proud center of Black political and cultural power in the mid-century North, home to Ida B. Wells, Louis Armstrong, and a generation of strivers.