Illinois

The Indian population of Illinois had disappeared by 1832 as a result of warfare and emigration. By 2000, however, Indian migration from Wisconsin, Minnesota, and elsewhere had brought the Native American population to 31,006, concentrated in Chicago.

Illinois Counties, County Seats, and County Areas and Populations

Illinois Counties, County Seats, and County Areas and Populations

French settlers brought in black slaves from the Caribbean in the mid-18th century; in 1752, one-third of the small non-Indian population was black. Slavery was slowly abolished in the early 19th century. For decades, however, few blacks entered the state, except to flee slavery in neighboring Kentucky and Missouri. Freed slaves did come to Illinois during the Civil War, concentrating in the state's southern tip and in Chicago. By 1900, 109,000 blacks lived in Illinois. Most held menial jobs in the cities or eked out a precarious existence on small farms in the far south. Large-scale black migration, mainly to Chicago, began during World War I. By 1940, Illinois had a black population of 387,000; extensive wartime and postwar migration brought the total in 2000 to 1,876,875, of whom more than half lived within the city of Chicago, which was close to 40% black. Smaller numbers of black Illinoisans lived in Peoria, Rockford, and certain Chicago suburbs.

The Hispanic population did not become significant until the 1960s. In 2000, the number Hispanics and Latinos was 1,530,262, living chiefly in Chicago. There were 1,144,390 persons of Mexican origin (up from 557,536 in 1990), 157,851 Puerto Ricans, and 18,438 Cubans; most of the remainder came from other Caribbean and Latin American countries. The Hispanic or Latino population represented 12.3% of the total state population.

In 2000 there were 76,725 Chinese in Illinois, 20,379 Japanese, 86,298 Filipinos, 51,453 Koreans, and 19,101 Vietnamese (up from 8,550 in 1990). The total Asian population was estimated at 423,603, placing Illinois 5th among the 50 states and the District of Columbia in number of Asian residents. Pacific Islanders numbered 4,610.

Members of non-British European ethnic groups are prevalent in all the state's major cities and in many farming areas. In 2000, 1,529,058 persons were foreign born (12.3% of the total population), including 389,928 Europeans, 359,812 Asians, 731,397 from Latin American countries, 26,158 Africans, and 2,553 from Oceanic countries. The most common ancestries of Illinois residents were German, Irish, Polish, English, and Italian. There were also significant numbers of Scandinavians, Irish, Lithuanians, Serbs, Eastern European Jews, Ukrainians, Slovaks, Hungarians, Czechs, Greeks, and Dutch. Except for the widely dispersed Germans, most of these ethnic groups lived in and around Chicago.

Most ethnic groups in Illinois maintain their own newspapers, clubs, festivals, and houses of worship. These reminders of their cultural heritage are now largely symbolic for the European ethnics, who have become highly assimilated into a "melting pot" society. Such was not always the case, however. In 1889, the legislature attempted to curtail foreign-language schools, causing a sharp political reaction among German Lutherans, German Catholics, and some Scandinavians. The upshot was the election of a German-born Democrat, John Peter Altgeld, as governor in 1892. During World War I, anti-German sentiment was intense in the state, despite the manifest American loyalty of the large German element, then about 25% of the state's population. The Germans responded by rapidly abandoning the use of their language and dissolving most of their newspapers and clubs. At about the same time, the US government, educators, social workers, and business firms sponsored extensive "Americanization" programs directed at the large numbers of recent arrivals from Poland, Italy, and elsewhere. The public schools especially played a major role in the assimilation process, as did the Catholic parochial schools, which sought to protect the immigrants' religious but not their ethnic identities.