lic accommodations in 1885. However,
             desegregation was far from enforced. African Americans found themselves
             battling against various forms of segregation in Chicago, with the most
             evident found in city housing. They were increasingly concentrated in a
             distinct ghetto which was known as the South Side's Black Belt. By 1920,
             the Black Belt was home to about 85 percent of the city's blacks. Even
             upper class African Americans who had lived in Chicago prior to the
             migration found themselves being forced into the ghetto areas, with little
             differentiation made by whites between them and the impoverished blacks
             While the Black Belt provided Chicago's African Americans with some
             degree of control over their lives as well as some refuge from unfriendly
             whites, it was severely overcrowded and impoverished. Forced into the
             ghetto, African Americans were also subject to high illness and mortality
             rates; a high percentage of residents on relief; a high crime rate;
             inadequate recreational facilities; lack of building repairs; accumulated
             garbage and dirty streets; overcrowded schools; and high rates mistreatment
             and brutality at the hands of law enforcement.
             White Chicagoans, with the help of the government, worked hard in
             their efforts to prevent the migrants from moving into white
             neighborhoods. Neighborhood associations were formed with policies enacted
             to insure that blacks were not allowed to move into the neighborhood. In
             1917, via the impetus of the Chicago Real Estate Board, a Special Committee
             on Negro Housing was appointed to formulate recommendations as to how the
             problem could be dealt withy. On the basis of the work of the committee,
             the Board adopted a policy of block-by-block racial segregation, carefully
             controlled so that "each block shall be filled solidly and . . . further
             expansion shall be confined to contiguous blocks." This effort was
             ...