Jean-Baptiste Pointe DuSable, the Founder of Chicago

Sometime in the mid-1780s, Jean-Baptiste Pointe DuSable, a Black man from Saint-Domingue, and his Potawatomi wife, Kitihawa, settled with their family on a swampy site near Lake Michigan called Eschecagou, “land of the wild onions.” The homestead and trading post they built on the mouth of the Chicago River, with a comfortably appointed cabin, workshop, bake house, stable, smokehouse, and more, was the first settlement on what would become the city of Chicago. Their importance was long forgotten, but in 2006, the Chicago City Council belatedly voted to amend the Municipal Code of Chicago to add DuSable as the city’s official founder. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Courtney P. Joseph , Associate Professor of History and African American Studies at Lake Forest College who is writing a book titled DuSable’s Diaspora: Haiti, Blackness, and Belonging in Chicago . Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag , composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode audio is: “ Chicago (that Toddling Town) ,” written by Fred Fisher and performed by Jazz-Bo’s Carolina Serenaders in 1922; the audio is in the public domain and is available via the Inte…