Chicago Will Have a Black Mayor Despite Its Shrinking Black Population

On Tuesday, February 26, former federal prosecutor Lori Lightfoot and Cook County Board of Commissioners president Tori Preckwinkle were the top vote-getters in Chicago’s crowded mayoral race. Both women are African Americans and no matter who wins the April 2 runoff election, Chicago will have a black woman mayor for the first time in the city’s history, and its first elected black mayor since Harold Washington in 1983 (Eugene Sawyer, an African American, was appointed mayor after Washington died in 1987). Chicago did this despite suffering record-high levels of black population loss over the last few years.

Chicago has the unique distinction of having shed its overall population for three years in a row. Much of that loss was driven by a decline in the African-American population, which has dropped 24 percent since 2000. As much as there’s been a shift of black people out of Chicago there have been some intra-city shifts as well: Several neighborhoods in Chicago’s North side—where most of the city’s white population has historically lived—added black residents since 2010. These North side neighborhoods are where Lightfoot performed best in this week’s mayoral election.