White flight and blockbusting drastically changed the demographics of the West Side by the 1950s . Throughout this decade , many white Chicagoans moved to the suburbs in a planned move by investors who , through scare tactics and instigating racial antagonism , encouraged white Chicagoans to sell their city homes and buy homes the investors built in the suburbs . By 1960 , Chicago recorded its first ever population drop . However , Black and Latino residents began filling the West Side to its maximum . Black areas of the West Side began to experience highly impoverished conditions moving into the 1960s . Many residents moved into housing projects that were built throughout the West Side the previous decade , the main housing projects being ABLA and Henry Horner Homes in the Near West Side , Rockwell Gardens and Harrison Courts in East Garfield Park , and Lawndale Gardens in Lawndale/Little Village . Many of these housing projects became predominantly Black and poor . The Chicago Housing Authority was known for its segregationist policies and lack of building maintenance , and police brutality was very frequent . After the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4 , 1968 , the Blacks of the West Side rebelled in anger against the oppressive system made more apparent by King 's murder . Long stretches of businesses along Madison Street in Garfield Park and Austin and along Roosevelt Road in Lawndale , the majority of which were owned by whites , were looted and burned down . Mayor Daley ordered 10,500 police and 6,700 National Guardsmen into the West Side , ordering " to shoot to kill any arsonist or anyone with a Molotov cocktail in his hand ... and ... to shoot to maim or cripple anyone looting any stores in our city . " During the late 1960s , the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party had its headquarters on the West Side on Madison Street near Western Avenue . The chapter chairman , Fred Hampton , helped his chapter establish a free breakfast program for children as well as free health clinics for the community . Hampton was murdered in his sleep in a planned raid by Chicago police and the FBI on the party 's West Side apartment on Monroe Street in December 1969 . Over 5,000 people attended Hampton 's funeral . The drug epidemic began sweeping through the West Side in the 1970s , and crime continued to climb . Unlike the South Side , there were n't large middle , upper-middle , or affluent Black communities that developed on the West Side . They existed by block or in small pockets , mostly in the Austin neighborhood closer to the suburb of Oak Park . Black representation of the West Side in Congress began in the 1970s with the placement of George W. Collins in the seat of Daniel J. Ronan who died in 1969 . After George W. Collins was killed in a plane crash at Midway Airport in 1972 , his wife Cardiss Collins was elected to Congress , making her the first Black female representative from the Midwest
plane crash
United Airlines Flight 553
West Side, Chicago