 However, while unofficial, socially early 20th-century Chicago beaches were racially segregated.African Americans had a long history in Chicago, with the city sending Illinois' first African-American representative, John W. E. Thomas, to the state legislature in 1876.Nonetheless, blacks in 1900 were only about 1 percent of the total population of a city that had seen large European immigration, but the black population expanded dramatically in the early years of the 20th century.