 With industrial jobs in the stockyards and meatpacking industry opening as European immigration was cut off by World War I, from 1916 to 1919 the African-American population in Chicago increased from 44,000 to 109,000, a 148 percent increase.The growing African-American population settling in the South Side bordered a neighborhood of Irish Americans existing since the mid-19th century, and the two groups competed for jobs and housing.African-American migrants arrived after waves of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe; there was competition and tensions in their relationships, too.