In 1860, Illinois was Abraham Lincoln territory. As a northern state, it was strongly opposed to the institution of slavery. 

Chicago is a hub for immigrants and has been with Poles, Italians, Germans, and Irish. Puerto Ricans once dotted the Lower West Side before many of them left, being largely replaced by Mexicans. Mexicans are not just in the Lower West Side; they are in Gage Park, Brighton Park, Little Village, Humboldt Park, Belmont Cragin, just to name a few. Blacks from the South escaped Jim Crow for places like Woodlawn and Englewood, only to be left out in the gutters of poverty.

So where do we go from there?

The suburbs of Chicago. You have Naperville, Wheaton, Arlington Heights, Highland Park, Schaumburg, Palatine, Oak Park, Lake Zurich, Algonquin, Bolingbrook, Crystal Lake, Niles, Oak Ridge, Tinley Park, Orland Park, just to name a few. They’re rolling in the big bucks. Many of them are professionals who commute to Chicago every day. Nothing is special about either Aurora and Elgin other than the fact that the two have large Latino populations. The South Suburbs of Cook County are decent, but Harvey is a real dump. Dolton has just started to reverse the damage caused by their former mayor. 

Rockford was once a manufacturing town, but the big boy companies have since left, and their economy isn’t doing too well. Rock Island and Moline make up the Quad Cities with Bettendorf and Davenport. They’re not much better than Rockford. Peoria is meh, nothing special about it. Springfield is the capital of Illinois. Decatur was the birthplace of the Chicago Bears, but even it is a struggling town with a struggling economy. Danville is also struggling, and Fair Oaks looks so rundown that some housing units had to be torn down. Champaign-Urbana has a lot of young intellectuals and some really rundown housing projects. Bloomington-Normal is also a college town. Metropolis is a very small town addicted to Superman. Cairo is a depressing old shell of its former self. Mound City doesn’t look much better. Carbondale is a college town smaller than Bloomington-Normal. The Metro East is uninspiring, and East St. Louis is rotting in real time. 

Illinois: The Land of Lincoln